Electric-permittivity-based instability of two dielectric miscible liquids under DC field.

This paper considers the mixing of two dielectric miscible viscous liquids with different electric permittivities bounded by solid walls in an external electric field normal to the interface of the liquids. The mutual diffusion of these two liquids leads to the formation of an unsteady self-similar 1D diffusion layer. This layer is found to be unstable to the perturbations of the interface.

Tonks-Frenkel instability in electrolyte under high-frequency AC electric fields.

The instability of an electrolyte surface to a high-frequency, 10 to 200kHz, electric field, normal to the interface is investigated theoretically. From a practical viewpoint, such a high frequency leads to the absence of undesired electrochemical reactions and provides an additional control parameter. The theory of unsteady electric double layer by Barrero and Ramos is exploited.

Stability of two layers dielectric-electrolyte microflow subjected to an alternating external electric field.

The stability of the electroosmotic flow of the two-phase system electrolyte-dielectric with a free interface in the microchannel under an external electric field is examined theoretically. The mathematical model includes the Nernst-Plank equations for the ion concentrations. The linear stability of the 1D nonstationary solution with respect to the small, periodic perturbations along the channel, is studied.

Cooling beyond the boundary value in supercritical fluids under vibration.

Supercritical fluids when subjected to simultaneous quench and vibration have been known to cause various intriguing flow phenomena and instabilities depending on the relative direction of temperature gradient and vibration. Here we describe a surprising and interesting phenomenon wherein temperature in the fluid falls below the imposed boundary value when the walls are quenched and the direction of vibration is normal to the temperature gradient. We define these regions in the fluid as sink zones, because they act like sink for heat within the fluid domain.

On two-liquid AC electroosmotic system for thin films.

Lab-on-chip devices employ EOF for transportation and mixing of liquids. However, when a steady (DC) electric field is applied to the liquids, there are undesirable effects such as degradation of sample, electrolysis, bubble formation, etc. due to large magnitude of electric potential required to generate the flow.

Thermoelectroconvection near charge-selective surfaces.

A new kind of instability caused by Joule heating near charge-selective surfaces (permselective membranes, electrodes, or systems of micro- and nanochannels) is investigated theoretically using a model based on the Rubinstein-Zaltzman approach. A simple relation is derived for the marginal stability curves: Joule heating can either destabilize or stabilize the steady state, depending on the location of the space charge region relative to the gravity vector. For the destabilizing case, the short-wave Rubinstein-Zaltzman instability is replaced by a long-wave thermal instability.

Faraday instability in a near-critical fluid under weightlessness.

Experiments on near-critical hydrogen have been conducted under magnetic compensation of gravity to investigate the Faraday instability that arises at the liquid-vapor interface under zero-gravity conditions. We investigated such instability in the absence of stabilizing gravity. Under such conditions, vibration orients the interface and can destabilize it.

Frozen-wave instability in near-critical hydrogen subjected to horizontal vibration under various gravity fields.

The frozen-wave instability which appears at a liquid-vapor interface when a harmonic vibration is applied in a direction tangential to it has been less studied until now. The present paper reports experiments on hydrogen (H2) in order to study this instability when the temperature is varied near its critical point for various gravity levels. Close to the critical point, a liquid-vapor density difference and surface tension can be continuously varied with temperature in a scaled, universal way.

Effect of interfacial Maxwell stress on time periodic electro-osmotic flow in a thin liquid film with a flat interface.

Electro-osmotic flows (EOF) have seen remarkable applications in lab-on-a-chip based microdevices owing to their lack of moving components, durability, and nondispersive nature of the flow profiles under specifically designed conditions. However, such flows may typically suffer from classical Faradaic artifacts like electrolysis of the solvent, which affects the flow rate control. Such a problem has been seen to be overcome by employing time periodic EOFs.

Free-surface instability in electro-osmotic flows of ultrathin liquid films.

The stability of a free surface under electro-osmotic flow in thin liquid films is investigated where the film thickness can be varied over the scale of a thick to thin electrical double layer while considering the relative contribution from the van der Waals forces. The role of interfacial Maxwell stress on thin film stability is highlighted. This configuration gives some interesting insights into the physics of free surface stability at a scale where various competing forces such as the Coulombic force, van der Waals force, and surface tension come into play.

Mixing generated by Faraday instability between miscible liquids.

The mixing between two miscible liquids subject to vertical vibrations is studied by way of experiments and a two-dimensional numerical model. The experimental setup consisted of a rectangular cell in which the lighter fluid was placed above the denser one. The diffuse interface was then visualized by a high-speed camera.

Lattice Boltzmann simulation of thermofluidic transport phenomena in a DC magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) micropump.

A comprehensive non-isothermal Lattice Boltzmann (LB) algorithm is proposed in this article to simulate the thermofluidic transport phenomena encountered in a direct-current (DC) magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) micropump. Inside the pump, an electrically conducting fluid is transported through the microchannel by the action of an electromagnetic Lorentz force evolved out as a consequence of the interaction between applied electric and magnetic fields. The fluid flow and thermal characteristics of the MHD micropump depend on several factors such as the channel geometry, electromagnetic field strength and electrical property of the conducting fluid.

Lattice kinetic simulation of nonisothermal magnetohydrodynamics.

In this paper, a lattice kinetic algorithm is presented to simulate nonisothermal magnetohydrodynamics in the low-Mach number incompressible limit. The flow and thermal fields are described by two separate distribution functions through respective scalar kinetic equations and the magnetic field is governed by a vector distribution function through a vector kinetic equation. The distribution functions are only coupled via the macroscopic density, momentum, magnetic field, and temperature computed at the lattice points.

Thermovibrational instability in supercritical fluids under weightlessness.

Low amplitude, high frequency vibrations can induce in fluids under weightlessness behaviors that resemble those induced by gravity. Supercritical fluids (above their gas-liquid critical point) are used in the space industry and also display universal behavior. They are particularly sensitive to gravity effects.

Piston-effect-induced thermal oscillations at the Rayleigh-Bénard threshold in supercritical 3He.

We perform a Navier-Stokes numerical simulation of the transient Rayleigh-Bénard convection onset in nearly supercritical 3He in the exact conditions in experiments performed by Kogan, Murphy, and Meyer [Phys. Rev. Lett.