Anubhab Roy

This work aims to implement the asymptotic homogenization method (AHM) to predict the effective thermal/electrical conductivity for suspensions with aligned inclusions. Exploiting the substantial separation of length scales between the macroscopic and microscopic structures, multiscale modeling using the AHM capitalizes on the perturbations of the potential field caused due to the presence of an inclusion under a macroscopic loading used to predict the effective property. The analytical formulation for the thermal/electrical conductivity problem is derived, and subsequently, the finite element formulation required to solve the unit cell problem is described. The results obtained for a cylindrical inclusion are validated against known analytical solutions for both the dilute [Mori-Tanaka (MT)] and concentrated volume fractions (φ) of the inclusion. This study revealed that MT estimate and AHM agree well at φ less than 0.4. However, in near-maximum packing fractions, the AHM results fared significantly better than MT when compared with known asymptotic forms [J. Keller, "Conductivity of a medium containing a dense array of perfectly conducting spheres or cylinders or nonconducting cylinders,"J. Appl. Phys. 34, 991 (1963)]. The proposed AHM method is then implemented in structures with aligned spheroidal inclusions of various aspect ratios and conductivity ratios, thus providing a more generalized approach to predict the effective thermal/electrical conductivity. The results obtained are systematically benchmarked and validated against known analytical expressions.

We study the role of phase change and thermal noise in particle transport in turbulent flows. We employ a toy model to extract the main physics: Condensing droplets are modelled as heavy particles which grow in size, the ambient flow is modelled as a two-dimensional Taylor-Green flow consisting of an array of vortices delineated by separatrices, and thermal noise are modelled as uncorrelated Gaussian white noise. In general, heavy inertial particles are centrifuged out of regions of high vorticity and into regions of high strain. In cellular flows, we find, in agreement with earlier results, that droplets with Stokes numbers smaller than a critical value, St

The collisions in a dilute polydisperse suspension of sub-Kolmogorov spheres with negligible inertia settling in a turbulent flow and interacting through hydrodynamics including continuum breakdown on close approach are studied. A statistically significant decrease in ideal collision rate without gravity is resolved via a Lagrangian stochastic velocity-gradient model at Taylor microscale Reynolds number larger than those accessible by current direct numerical simulation capabilities. This arises from the difference between the mean inward velocity and the root-mean-square particle relative velocity. Differential sedimentation, comparable to the turbulent shear relative velocity, but minimally influencing the sampling of the velocity gradient, diminishes the Reynolds number dependence and enhances the ideal collision rate i.e. the rate without interactions. The collision rate is retarded by hydrodynamic interactions between sphere pairs and is governed by non-continuum lubrication as well as full continuum hydrodynamic interactions at larger separations. The collision efficiency (ratio of actual to ideal collision rate) depends on the relative strength of differential sedimentation and turbulent shear, the size ratio of the interacting spheres and the Knudsen number (defined as the ratio of the mean-free path of the gas to the mean radius of the interacting spheres). We develop an analytical approximation to concisely report computed results across the parameter space. This accurate closed form expression could be a critical component in computing the evolution of the size distribution in applications such as water droplets in clouds or commercially valuable products in industrial aggregators.

We study the role of wall slip on the stability of a two-layered plane Poiseuille flow. The equations of motion for the base flow state are derived, and a linear stability analysis is carried out to arrive at the fourth-order Orr-Sommerfeld equations for the fluid layers. An asymptotic analysis is conducted for wavenumbers in the long wavelength limit. The Orr-Sommerfeld equations are solved numerically using a multidomain Chebyshev Collocation Method to arrive at the spectrum of eigenvalues and their associated eigenfunctions. The effect of wall slip on the stability characteristics of the flow system is examined in greater detail. It is observed that slip brings about a stabilizing, as well as a destabilizing effect on the flow system.

In this paper, we study the role of electrostatic forces on pair trajectories of two uncharged conducting spheres subject to an external electric field. We consider the hydrodynamic interactions between the spheres as they move relative to one another. Previous studies have shown that electric-field-induced forces on a two-sphere system are always attractive, except for the configuration when the line joining the centers is perpendicular to the external electric field. In the current study, we derive the asymptotic form of the interparticle force induced by the electric field in the lubrication limit for arbitrary size ratios. The attractive electric force diverges as the separation approaches zero. Thus, our calculation shows that the electric-field-induced forces can overcome the continuum lubrication resistance and allow finite time contact between the surfaces of two spherical conductors. We calculate the asymptotic variation of interparticle separation using the near-field asymptotic expressions for the electric-field-induced forces, exploring the role of hydrodynamic interactions in interparticle motion parallel and perpendicular to the electric field.

We study the temporal spectrum of linearised, azimuthal, interfacial perturbations imposed on a cylindrical gaseous filament surrounded by immiscible, viscous, quiescent fluid in radially unbounded geometry. Linear stability analysis shows that the base state is stable to azimuthal perturbations of standing wave form. Normal mode analysis leads to a viscous dispersion relation and shows that in addition to the discrete spectrum, the problem also admits a continuous spectrum. For a given azimuthal Fourier mode and Laplace number, the discrete spectrum yields two eigenfunctions which decay exponentially to zero at large radii and thus cannot represent far field perturbations. In addition to these discrete modes, we find an uncountably infinite set of eigenmodes which decay algebraically to zero. The completeness theorem for perturbation vorticity may be expressed as a sum over the discrete modes and an integral over the continuous ones. We validate our normal mode results by solving the linearised, initial value problem (IVP). The initial perturbation is taken to be an interfacial, azimuthal Fourier mode with zero perturbation vorticity. It is shown that the expression for the time dependent amplitude of a capillary standing wave (in the Laplace domain,) has poles and branch points on the complex plane. We show that the residue at the poles yields the discrete spectrum, while the contribution from either side of the branch cut provides the continuous spectrum contribution. The particular initial condition treated here in the IVP, has projections on the discrete as well as the continuous spectrum eigenmodes and thus both sets are excited initially. Consequently the time evolution of the standing wave amplitude and the perturbation vorticity field have the form of a sum over discrete exponential contributions and an integral over a continuous range of exponential terms. The solution to the IVP leads to explicit analytical expressions for the standing wave amplitude and the vorticity field in the fluid outside the filament. Linearised analytical results are validated using direct numerical simulations (DNS) conducted using a code developed in-house for solving the incompressible, Navier-Stokes equations with an interface. For small perturbation amplitude, analytical predictions show excellent agreement with DNS. Our analysis complements and extends earlier results on the discrete and the continuous spectrum for interfacial viscous, capillary waves on unbounded domain.

Experimental measurements of the force and torque on freely settling fibres are compared with predictions of the slender-body theory of Khayat & Cox (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 209, 1989, pp. 435-462). Although the flow is viscous dominated at the scale of the fibre diameter, fluid inertia is important on the scale of the fibre length, leading to inertial torques which tend to rotate symmetric fibres toward horizontal orientations. Experimentally, the torque on symmetric fibres is inferred from the measured rate of rotation of the fibres using a quasi-steady torque balance. It is shown theoretically that fibres with an asymmetric radius or mass density distribution undergo a supercritical pitch-fork bifurcation from vertical to oblique settling with increasing Archimedes number, increasing Reynolds number or decreasing asymmetry. This transition is observed in experiments with asymmetric mass density and we find good agreement with the predicted symmetry breaking transition. In these experiments, the steady orientation of the oblique settling fibres provides a means to measure the inertial torque in the absence of transient effects since it is balanced by the known gravitational torque.

Collisions in a dilute polydisperse suspension of spheres of negligible inertia interacting through non-continuum hydrodynamics and settling in a slow uniaxial compressional flow are studied. The ideal collision rate is evaluated as a function of the relative strength of gravity and uniaxial compressional flow and it deviates significantly from a linear superposition of these driving terms. This non-trivial behaviour is exacerbated by interparticle interactions based on uniformly valid non-continuum hydrodynamics, that capture non-continuum lubrication at small separations and full continuum hydrodynamic interactions at larger separations, retarding collisions driven purely by sedimentation significantly more than those driven purely by the linear flow. While the ideal collision rate is weakly dependent on the orientation of gravity with the axis of compression, the rate including hydrodynamic interactions varies by more than with orientation. This dramatic shift can be attributed to complex trajectories driven by interparticle interactions that prevent particle pairs from colliding or enable a circuitous path to collision. These and other important features of the collision process are studied in detail using trajectory analysis at near unity and significantly smaller than unity size ratios of the interacting spheres. For each case analysis is carried for a large range of relative strengths and orientations of gravity to the uniaxial compressional flow, and Knudsen numbers (ratio of mean free path of the media to mean radius).

This study examines the effects of an evolving attractant field, due to the phenomenon of autochemotaxis, on the stability of a dilute suspension of active swimmers in a channel. Motile swimmers typically exhibit an orientation bias that is dependent upon the local gradient in the attractant field. By modelling the autochemotactic behaviour of the swimmers through a non-dimensional number Da that characterizes the rate of attractant secretion, we are able to show that the active stress-driven instability predicted by Kasyap & Koch (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 108, issue 3, 2012, p. 038101) for a suspension of pushers is stabilized with increasing Da. We also show that the autochemotactic behaviour results in an active stress-driven flow instability for a suspension of pullers. Furthermore, we show analytically and numerically that in the absence of convective transport of the attractant, pushers and pullers undergo a simultaneous switch of stabilities at a critical Da.

Transient growth of perturbations by a linear non-modal evolution is studied here in a stably stratified bounded Couette flow. The density stratification is linear. Classical inviscid stability theory states that a parallel shear flow is stable to exponentially growing disturbances if the Richardson number (Ri) is greater than 1/4 everywhere in the flow. Experiments and numerical simulations at higher Ri show however that algebraically growing disturbances can lead to transient amplification. The complexity of a stably stratified shear flow stems from its ability to combine this transient amplification with propagating internal gravity waves (IGWs). The optimal perturbations associated with maximum energy amplification are numerically obtained at intermediate Reynolds numbers. It is shown that in this wall-bounded flow, the three-dimensional optimal perturbations are oblique, unlike in unstratified flow. A partitioning of energy into kinetic and potential helps in understanding the exchange of energies and how it modifies the transient growth. We show that the apportionment between potential and kinetic energy depends, in an interesting manner, on the Richardson number, and on time, as the transient growth proceeds from an optimal perturbation. The oft-quoted stabilizing role of stratification is also probed in the non-diffusive limit in the context of disturbance energy amplification.