scholarly journals Linear stability of Taylor–Couette flow of shear-thinning fluids: modal and non-modal approaches

2015 ◽  
Vol 776 ◽  
pp. 354-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Agbessi ◽  
B. Alibenyahia ◽  
C. Nouar ◽  
C. Lemaitre ◽  
L. Choplin

In this paper, the response of circular Couette flow of shear-thinning fluids between two infinitely long coaxial cylinders to weak disturbances is addressed. It is highlighted by transient growth analysis. Both power-law and Carreau models are used to describe the rheological behaviour of the fluid. The first part of the paper deals with the asymptotic long-time behaviour of three-dimensional infinitesimal perturbations. Using the normal-mode approach, an eigenvalue problem is derived and solved by means of the spectral collocation method. An extensive description and the classification of eigenspectra are presented. The influence of shear-thinning effects on the critical Reynolds numbers as well as on the critical azimuthal and axial wavenumbers is analysed. It is shown that with a reference viscosity defined with the characteristic scales $\hat{{\it\mu}}_{ref}=\hat{K}(\hat{R}_{1}\hat{{\it\Omega}}_{1}/\hat{d})^{(n-1)}$ for a power-law fluid and $\hat{{\it\mu}}_{ref}=\hat{{\it\mu}}_{0}$ for a Carreau fluid, the shear-thinning character is destabilizing for counter-rotating cylinders. Moreover, the axial wavenumber increases with $\mathit{Re}_{2}$ and with shear-thinning effects. The second part investigates the short-time behaviour of the disturbance using the non-modal approach. For the same inner and outer Reynolds numbers, the amplification of the kinetic energy perturbation becomes much more important with increasing shear-thinning effects. Two different mechanisms are used to explain the transient growth, depending on whether or not there is a stratification of the angular momentum. On the Rayleigh line and for Newtonian fluids, the optimal perturbation is in the form of azimuthal streaks, which transform into Taylor vortices through the anti-lift-up mechanism. In the other cases, the optimal perturbation is initially oriented against the base flow, then it tilts to align with the base flow at optimal time. The scaling laws for the optimal energy amplification proposed in the literature for Newtonian fluids are extended to shear-thinning fluids.

Author(s):  
Akhilesh K. Sahu ◽  
Raj P. Chhabra ◽  
V. Eswaran

The two-dimensional and unsteady flow of power-law fluids past a long square cylinder has been investigated numerically in the range of conditions 60 ≤ Re ≤ 160 and 0.5 ≤ n ≤ 2.0. Over this range of Reynolds numbers, the flow is periodic in time for Newtonian fluids. However, no such information is available for power law fluids. A semi-explicit finite volume method has been used on a non-uniform collocated grid arrangement to solve the governing equations. The macroscopic quantities such as drag coefficients, Strouhal number, lift coefficient as well as the detailed kinematic variables like stream function, vorticity and so on, have been calculated as functions of the pertinent dimension-less groups. In particular, the effects of Reynolds number and of the power-law index have been investigated in the unsteady laminar flow regime. The leading edge separation in shear-thinning fluids produces an increase in drag values with the increasing Reynolds number, while shear-thickening behaviour delays the leading edge separation. So, the drag coefficient in the above-mentioned range of Reynolds number, Re, in shear-thinning fluids (n < 1) initially decreases but at high values of the Reynolds number, it increases. As expected, on the other hand, in case of shear-thickening fluids (n > 1) drag coefficient reduces with Reynolds number, Re. Furthermore, the present results also suggest the transition from steady to unsteady flow conditions to occur at lower Reynolds numbers in shear-thickening fluids than that in Newtonian fluids. Also, the spectra of lift signal for shear-thickening fluids show that the flow is truly periodic in nature with a single dominant frequency in the above range of Reynolds number. In shear-thinning fluids at higher Re, quasi-periodicity sets in with additional frequencies, which indicate the transition from the 2-D to 3-D flows.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Joakim Skadsem ◽  
Arild Saasen

Abstract Drilling fluids and well cements are example non-Newtonian fluids that are used for geothermal and petroleum well construction. Measurement of the non-Newtonian fluid viscosities are normally performed using a concentric cylinder Couette geometry, where one of the cylinders rotates at a controlled speed or under a controlled torque. In this paper we address Couette flow of yield stress shear thinning fluids in concentric cylinder geometries.We focus on typical oilfield viscometers and discuss effects of yield stress and shear thinning on fluid yielding at low viscometer rotational speeds and errors caused by the Newtonian shear rate assumption. We relate these errors to possible implications for typical wellbore flows.


Author(s):  
Nariman Ashrafi ◽  
Habib Karimi Haghighi

The effects of nonlinearities on the stability are explored for shear thickening fluids in the narrow-gap limit of the Taylor-Couette flow. It is assumed that shear-thickening fluids behave exactly as opposite of shear thinning ones. A dynamical system is obtained from the conservation of mass and momentum equations which include nonlinear terms in velocity components due to the shear-dependent viscosity. It is found that the critical Taylor number, corresponding to the loss of stability of Couette flow becomes higher as the shear-thickening effects increases. Similar to the shear thinning case, the Taylor vortex structure emerges in the shear thickening flow, however they quickly disappear thus bringing the flow back to the purely azimuthal flow. Naturally, one expects shear thickening fluids to result in inverse dynamical behavior of shear thinning fluids. This study proves that this is not the case for every point on the bifurcation diagram.


2014 ◽  
Vol 751 ◽  
pp. 184-215
Author(s):  
Liyan Yu ◽  
John Hinch

AbstractWe study the solitary wave solutions in a thin film of a power-law fluid coating a vertical fibre. Different behaviours are observed for shear-thickening and shear-thinning fluids. For shear-thickening fluids, the solitary waves are larger and faster when the reduced Bond number is smaller. For shear-thinning fluids, two branches of solutions exist for a certain range of the Bond number, where the solitary waves are larger and faster on one and smaller and slower on the other as the Bond number decreases. We carry out an asymptotic analysis for the large and fast-travelling solitary waves to explain how their speeds and amplitudes change with the Bond number. The analysis is then extended to examine the stability of the two branches of solutions for the shear-thinning fluids.


2012 ◽  
Vol 183-184 ◽  
pp. 37-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brahim Alibenyahia ◽  
Cécile Lemaitre ◽  
Chérif Nouar ◽  
Noureddine Ait-Messaoudene

2016 ◽  
Vol 139 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio L. D. Kfuri ◽  
Edson J. Soares ◽  
Roney L. Thompson ◽  
Renato N. Siqueira

Industrial processes with non-Newtonian fluids are common in many segments such as petroleum, cosmetic, and food industries. Slurries, emulsions, and gas–liquid dispersions are some examples with industrial relevance. When a fluid flows in a pipe system, pressure losses are always present. For Newtonian fluids, a quite reasonable understanding of this phenomenon was already achieved and is available in the literature. The same cannot be stated for non-Newtonian fluids owing to their complex characteristics, such as pseudoplasticity, viscoplasticity, elasticity, and thixotropy. The understanding of the influence of these characteristics on flow behavior is very important in order to design efficient pipeline systems. The design of such systems requires the estimation of the pressure drop due to friction effects. However, there are few works regarding friction losses for non-Newtonian fluids in pipeline systems, making this task a difficult one. In this study, two classes of fluids are investigated and compared with the Newtonian results. The first category of fluids are the ones that exhibits pseudoplastic behavior and can be modeled as a power-law fluid, and the second category are the ones that possesses a yield stress and can be modeled as a Bingham fluid. Polyflow was used to compute the friction losses in both abrupt contractions and expansions laminar flow conditions. It shows that for the expansion cases, the aspect ratio affects more the local friction coefficients than for the contraction cases. The influence of the power index n on local friction losses is similar for both cases, abrupt contractions and abrupt expansions. At low Reynolds numbers, dilatant fluids present the lowest values of the friction coefficient, K, independent of geometry. At high Reynolds numbers, a reversal of the curves occurs, and the dilatant fluid presents larger values of K coefficient. For the cases investigated, there is also a Reynolds number in which all the curves exhibit the same value of K for any value of the power-law index. The effect of τy′ shows a different behavior between contractions and expansions. In the case of contractions, the material with the highest dimensionless yield stress has the highest K value. In the case of the expansions, the behavior is the opposite, i.e., the higher the yield stress, the lower is the values of the K coefficient. Equations for each accessory as a function of the rheological parameters of the fluid and the Reynolds number of the flow are also proposed. The data were adjusted according to two main equations: the two Ks method proposed by Hooper (1981, “The Two-K Method Predicts Head Losses in Pipe Fittings,” Chem. Eng., 81, pp. 96–100.) is used for all the contractions cases, and the equation proposed by Oliveira et al. (1997, “A General Correlation for the Local Coefficient in Newtonian Axisymmetric Sudden Expansions,” Int. J. Heat Fluid Flow, 19(6), pp. 655–660.) is used for all the expansions cases. The equations found were compared with the numerical results and showed satisfactory precision and thus can be used for engineering applications.


CALCOLO ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascal Heid ◽  
Endre Süli

AbstractWe explore the convergence rate of the Kačanov iteration scheme for different models of shear-thinning fluids, including Carreau and power-law type explicit quasi-Newtonian constitutive laws. It is shown that the energy difference contracts along the sequence generated by the iteration. In addition, an a posteriori computable contraction factor is proposed, which improves, on finite-dimensional Galerkin spaces, previously derived bounds on the contraction factor in the context of the power-law model. Significantly, this factor is shown to be independent of the choice of the cut-off parameters whose use was proposed in the literature for the Kačanov iteration applied to the power-law model. Our analytical findings are confirmed by a series of numerical experiments.


Author(s):  
Isabella M. Gavarini ◽  
Alessandro Bottaro ◽  
Frans T. M. Nieuwstadt

Transition in a cylindrical pipe flow still eludes thorough understanding. Most recent advances are based on the concept of transient growth of disturbances, but even this scenario is not fully confirmed by DNS and/or experiments. Based on the fact that even the most carefully conducted experiment is biased by uncertainties, we explore the spatial growth of disturbances developing on top of an almost ideal, axially invariant Poiseuille flow. The optimal deviation of the base flow from the ideal parabolic profile is computed by a variational tecnique, and unstable modes, driven by an inviscid mechanism, are found to exist for very small values of the norm of the deviation, at low Reynolds numbers.


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