arXiv subjects

Ryan M. McMullen

Publications and source records attributed to Ryan M. McMullen.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Coupled Rayleigh--Taylor and Faraday instabilities in vertically vibrated cylindrical containers

Interfacial instabilities govern the mixing in confined multiphase flows. Yet, the two mechanisms that drive them are usually studied independently: the pressure-gradient-driven Rayleigh--Taylor (RT) instability, which amplifies long-wavelength modes, and the parametrically forced Faraday instability, which selects shorter-wavelength harmonic or subharmonic modes. When an adverse density contrast and vertical vibration act together, the two compete, and neither alone describes the response. We use Floquet analysis to characterize the onset, growth, modal structure, and velocity fields of Faraday--RT waves in a vertically vibrated cylinder, resolved by azimuthal wavenumber, radial (Bessel) mode, and Floquet harmonic. The formulation recovers the classical RT and Faraday limits and reproduces the instability onset at the frequencies measured experimentally. For a free-sliding interface, increasing the vibration amplitude shifts the dominant instability mechanism from RT growth to subharmonic and then harmonic Faraday responses. Lateral confinement can also stabilize individual RT modes, which is not possible in an unbounded domain, although other Faraday modes may remain unstable. Pinning the contact line couples radial modes that otherwise evolve independently, allowing the unstable mode to be a superposition of RT-unstable and Faraday-stable components. This superposition alters the instability mechanism, producing a richer radial pattern. Reconstruction of the unstable modes shows the (linear) velocity fields that imaging cannot access and demonstrates how the instabilities can change the flow more broadly.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2025

Comment on "Physical significance of artificial numerical noise in direct numerical simulation of turbulence"

Recently, Liao and Qin [J. Fluid Mech. 1008, R2 (2025)] claimed that numerical noise in direct numerical simulation of turbulence using the deterministic Navier-Stokes equations is "approximately equivalent" to the physical noise arising from random molecular motion (thermal fluctuations). We show here that it this claim not supported by their results and that it contradicts other results in the literature. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the numerical implementation of thermal fluctuations in their so-called "clean numerical simulations" is incorrect.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2025

Competing Mechanisms at Vibrated Interfaces of Density-Contrast Fluids

Fluid--fluid interfacial instability and subsequent fluid mixing are ubiquitous in nature and engineering. The hydrodynamic instability of fluid interfaces has long centered on the pressure gradient-driven long-wavelength Rayleigh--Taylor instability and the resonance-induced short-wavelength Faraday instability. However, neither instability alone can explain the dynamics when both mechanisms are present. We identify a previously unseen multi-modal instability emerging from their coexistence. When the denser fluid is polydimethylsiloxane, the mixed region at a high density contrast (Atwood number=0.9) spans a vibration amplitude range approximately twice the gravitational acceleration. Using Floquet stability analysis, we show how vibrations govern transitions between the RT and Faraday instabilities, leading to contention between these instabilities rather than resonant enhancement. The initial transient growth is represented by the exponential modal growth of the most unstable Floquet exponent, along with its accompanying periodic behavior. Direct numerical simulations validate these findings and track interface breakup into the multiscale and nonlinear regimes. Specifically, we show that growing RT modes nonlinearly suppress Faraday responses even when the initial growth rate of the Faraday instability is 3.63 times that of RT, so a bidirectional competition hinders their sustained coexistence.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2021

Tollmien-Schlichting route to elastoinertial turbulence in channel flow

Direct simulations of two-dimensional channel flow of a viscoelastic fluid have revealed the existence of a family of Tollmien-Schlichting (TS) attractors that is nonlinearly self-sustained by viscoelasticity [Shekar et al., J.Fluid Mech. 893, A3 (2020)]. Here, we describe the evolution of this branch in parameter space and its connections to the Newtonian TS attractor and to elastoinertial turbulence (EIT). At Reynolds number $Re=3000$, there is a solution branch with TS-wave structure but which is not connected to the Newtonian solution branch. At fixed Weissenberg number, $Wi$ and increasing Reynolds number from 3000-10000, this attractor goes from displaying a striation of weak polymer stretch localized at the critical layer to an extended sheet of very large polymer stretch. We show that this transition is directly tied to the strength of the TS critical layer fluctuations and can be attributed to a coil-stretch transition when the local Weissenberg number at the hyperbolic stagnation point of the Kelvin cat's eye structure of the TS wave exceeds $\frac{1}{2}$. At $Re=10000$, unlike $3000$, the Newtonian TS attractor evolves continuously into the EIT state as $Wi$ is increased from zero to about $13$. We describe how the structure of the flow and stress fields changes, highlighting in particular a "sheet-shedding" process by which the individual sheets associated with the critical layer structure break up to form the layered multisheet structure characteristic of EIT.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2020

Self-sustained elastoinertial Tollmien-Schlichting waves

Direct simulations of two-dimensional plane channel flow of a viscoelastic fluid at Reynolds number Re = 3000 reveal the existence of a family of attractors whose structure closely resembles the linear Tollmien-Schlichting (TS) mode, and in particular exhibits strongly localized stress fluctuations at the critical layer position of the TS mode. At the parameter values chosen, this solution branch is not connected to the nonlinear TS solution branch found for Newtonian flow, and thus represents a solution family that is nonlinearly self-sustained by viscoelasticity. The ratio between stress and velocity fluctuations is in quantitative agreement for the attractor and the linear TS mode, and increases strongly with Weissenberg number, Wi. For the latter, there is a transition in the scaling of this ratio as Wi increases, and the Wi at which the nonlinear solution family comes into existence is just above this transition. Finally, evidence indicates that this branch is connected through an unstable solution branch to two-dimensional elastoinertial turbulence (EIT). These results suggest that, in the parameter range considered here, the bypass transition leading to EIT is mediated by nonlinear amplification and self-sustenance of perturbations that excite the Tollmien-Schlichting mode.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2020

Interaction of forced Orr-Sommerfeld and Squire modes in a low-order representation of turbulent channel flow

A resolvent-based reduced-order representation is used to capture time-averaged second-order statistics in turbulent channel flow. The recently-proposed decomposition of the resolvent operator into two distinct families related to the Orr-Sommerfeld and Squire operators [K. Rosenberg and B. J. McKeon, Efficient representation of exact coherent states of the Navier-Stokes equations using resolvent analysis, Fluid Dynamics Research 51, 011401 (2019)] results in dramatic improvement in the ability to match all components of the energy spectra and the $uv$ cospectrum. The success of the new representation relies on the ability of the Squire modes to compete with the vorticity generated by Orr-Sommerfeld modes, which is demonstrated by decomposing the statistics into contributions from each family. It is then shown that this competition can be used to infer a phase relationship between the two sets of modes. Additionally, the relative Reynolds number scalings for the two families of resolvent weights are derived for the universal classes of resolvent modes presented by Moarref et al. [R. Moarref, A. S. Sharma, J. A. Tropp, and B. J. McKeon, Model-based scaling of the streamwise energy density in high-Reynolds-number turbulent channels, Journal of Fluid Mechanics 734, 275 (2013)]. These developments can be viewed as a starting point for further modeling efforts to quantify nonlinear interactions in wall-bounded turbulence.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2019

Critical-layer structures and mechanisms in elastoinertial turbulence

Simulations of elastoinertial turbulence (EIT) of a polymer solution at low Reynolds number are shown to display localized polymer stretch fluctuations. These are very similar to structures arising from linear stability (Tollmien-Schlichting (TS) modes) and resolvent analyses: i.e., critical-layer structures localized where the mean fluid velocity equals the wavespeed. Computation of self-sustained nonlinear TS waves reveals that the critical layer exhibits stagnation points that generate sheets of large polymer stretch. These kinematics may be the genesis of similar structures in EIT.

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