We study the two-phase Stokes flow driven by surface tension with two fluids of equal viscosity, separated by an asymptotically flat interface with graph geometry. The flow is assumed to be two-dimensional with the fluids filling the entire space. We prove well-posedness and parabolic smoothing in Sobolev spaces up to critical regularity. The main technical tools are an analysis of nonlinear singular integral operators arising from the hydrodynamic single-layer potential and abstract results on nonlinear parabolic evolution equations.

We deal with an initial boundary value problem of nonhomogeneous Boussinesq equations for magnetohydrodynamics convection in two-dimensional domains. We prove that there is a unique global strong solution. Moreover, we show that the temperature converges exponentially to zero in H1 as time goes to infinity. In particular, the initial data can be arbitrarily large and vacuum is allowed. Our analysis relies on energy method and a lemma of Desjardins (Arch. Rational Mech. Anal. 137:135–158, 1997).

We consider the inviscid limit for the two-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations in the class of integrable and bounded vorticity fields. It is expected that the difference between the Navier–Stokes and Euler velocity fields vanishes in $L^2$ with an order proportional to the square root of the viscosity constant $\nu $. Here, we provide an order $ (\nu /|\log \nu | )^{\frac 12\exp (-Ct)}$ bound, which slightly improves upon earlier results by Chemin.

If a body enters a viscous-inviscid fluid layer near a wall, then significant effects can be felt from the presence of incident vorticity, viscous forces and nonlinear forces. The focus here is on the response in the outer edge of such a wall layer. Nonlinear two-dimensional unsteady behaviour is examined through modelling, computation and analysis applied for a thin body travelling streamwise upstream or downstream or staying still relative to the wall. The wall layer with its balance between inviscid and viscous effects interacts freely with the body movement, causing relatively high magnitudes of pressure on top of the body and nonlinear responses in the gap between the body and the wall. The study finds explicit solutions for the motion of the body, separation of the flow arising near the wall and possible instabilities occurring over the length scale of any short body.

In lubrication problems, which concern thin film flow, cavitation has been considered as a fundamental element to correctly describe the characteristics of lubricated mechanisms. Here, the well-posedness of a cavitation model that can explain the interaction between viscous effects and micro-bubbles of gas is studied. This cavitation model consists of a coupled problem between the compressible Reynolds partial differential equation (PDE) (that describes the flow) and the Rayleigh–Plesset ordinary differential equation (that describes micro-bubbles evolution). A simplified form without bubbles convection is studied here. This coupled model seems never to be studied before from its mathematical aspects. Local times existence results are proved and stability theorems are obtained based on the continuity of the spectrum for bounded linear operators. Numerical results are presented to illustrate these theoretical results.

Steady two-dimensional fluid flow over an obstacle is solved using complex variable methods. We consider the cases of rectangular obstacles, such as large boulders, submerged in a potential flow. These may arise in geophysics, marine and civil engineering. Our models are applicable to initiation of motion that may result in subsequent transport. The local flow depends on the obstacle shape, slowing down in confining corners and speeding up in expanding corners. The flow generates hydrodynamic forces, drag and lift, and their associated moments, which differ around each face. Our model replaces the need for ill-defined drag and lift coefficients with geometry-dependent functions. We predict smaller flow velocities to initiate motion. We show how a joint-bound boulder can be transported against gravity, and analyse the influence of a wake region behind an isolated boulder.

We study the temporal decay estimate of the Oseen semigroup in a two-dimensional exterior domain. We establish the local energy decay estimate with a suitable dependence on the small translation speed, which is a significant improvement of Hishida’s result in 2016. As an application, we prove the $L^{q}$-$L^{r}$ estimates of the Oseen semigroup uniformly in the small translation speed.

The flow past an obstacle is a fundamental object in fluid mechanics. In 1967 Finn and Smith proved the unique existence of stationary solutions, called the physically reasonable solutions, to the Navier–Stokes equations in a two-dimensional exterior domain modeling this type of flows when the Reynolds number is sufficiently small. The asymptotic behavior of their solution at spatial infinity has been studied in detail and well understood by now, while its stability has remained open due to the difficulty specific to the two-dimensionality. In this paper, we prove that the physically reasonable solutions constructed by Finn and Smith are asymptotically stable with respect to small and well-localized initial perturbations.

We analyse the vorticity production of lake-scale circulation in wind-induced shallow flows using a linear elliptic partial differential equation. The linear equation is derived from the vorticity form of the shallow-water equation using a linear bed friction formula. The features of the wind-induced steady-state flow are analysed in a circular basin with topography as a concave paraboloid, having a quadratic pile in the middle of the basin. In our study, the size of the pile varies by a size parameter. The vorticity production due to the gradient in the topography (and the distance of the boundary) makes the streamlines parallel to topographical contours, and beyond a critical size parameter, it results in a secondary vortex pair. We compare qualitatively and quantitatively the steady-state circulation patterns and vortex evolution of the flow fields calculated by our linear vorticity model and the full, nonlinear shallow-water equations. From these results, we hypothesize that the steady-state topographical vorticity production in lake-scale wind-induced circulations can be described by the equilibrium of the wind friction field and the bed friction field. Moreover, the latter can also be considered as a linear function of the velocity vector field, and hence the problem can be described by a linear equation.

This paper studies the regularity results of classical solutions to the two-dimensional critical Oldroyd-B model in the corotational case. The critical case refers to the full Laplacian dissipation in the velocity or the full Laplacian dissipation in the non-Newtonian part of the stress tensor. Whether or not their classical solutions develop finite time singularities is a difficult problem and remains open. The object of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, we establish the global regularity result to the case when the critical case occurs in the velocity and a logarithmic dissipation occurs in the non-Newtonian part of the stress tensor. Secondly, when the critical case occurs in the non-Newtonian part of the stress tensor, we first present many interesting global a priori bounds, then establish a conditional global regularity in terms of the non-Newtonian part of the stress tensor. This criterion comes naturally from our approach to obtain a global L∞-bound for the vorticity ω.

The Navier-Stokes equations for viscous, incompressible fluids are studied in the three-dimensional periodic domains, with the body force having an asymptotic expansion, when time goes to infinity, in terms of power-decaying functions in a Sobolev-Gevrey space. Any Leray-Hopf weak solution is proved to have an asymptotic expansion of the same type in the same space, which is uniquely determined by the force, and independent of the individual solutions. In case the expansion is convergent, we show that the next asymptotic approximation for the solution must be an exponential decay. Furthermore, the convergence of the expansion and the range of its coefficients, as the force varies are investigated.

We present a Rayleigh–Ritz method for the approximation of fluid flow in a curved duct, including the secondary cross-flow, which is well known to develop for nonzero Dean numbers. Having a straightforward method to estimate the cross-flow for ducts with a variety of cross-sectional shapes is important for many applications. One particular example is in microfluidics where curved ducts with low aspect ratio are common, and there is an increasing interest in nonrectangular duct shapes for the purpose of size-based cell separation. We describe functionals which are minimized by the axial flow velocity and cross-flow stream function which solve an expansion of the Navier–Stokes model of the flow. A Rayleigh–Ritz method is then obtained by computing the coefficients of an appropriate polynomial basis, taking into account the duct shape, such that the corresponding functionals are stationary. Whilst the method itself is quite general, we describe an implementation for a particular family of duct shapes in which the top and bottom walls are described by a polynomial with respect to the lateral coordinate. Solutions for a rectangular duct and two nonstandard duct shapes are examined in detail. A comparison with solutions obtained using a finite-element method demonstrates the rate of convergence with respect to the size of the basis. An implementation for circular cross-sections is also described, and results are found to be consistent with previous studies.

Nonsymmetric branching flow through a three-dimensional (3D) vessel is considered at medium-to-high flow rates. The branching is from one mother vessel to two or more daughter vessels downstream, with laminar steady or unsteady conditions assumed. The inherent 3D nonsymmetry is due to the branching shapes themselves, or the differences in the end pressures in the daughter vessels, or the incident velocity profiles in the mother. Computations based on lattice-Boltzmann methodology are described first. A subsequent analysis focuses on small 3D disturbances and increased Reynolds numbers. This reduces the 3D problem to a two-dimensional one at the outer wall in all pressure-driven cases. As well as having broader implications for feeding into a network of vessels, the findings enable predictions of how much swirling motion in the cross-plane is generated in a daughter vessel downstream of a 3D branch junction, and the significant alterations provoked locally in the shear stresses and pressures at the walls. Nonuniform incident wall-shear and unsteady effects are examined. A universal asymptotic form is found for the flux change into each daughter vessel in a 3D branching of arbitrary cross-section with a thin divider.

The immersed boundary method is a widely used mixed Eulerian/Lagrangian framework for simulating the motion of elastic structures immersed in viscous fluids. In this work, we consider a poroelastic immersed boundary method in which a fluid permeates a porous, elastic structure of negligible volume fraction, and extend this method to include stress relaxation of the material. The porous viscoelastic method presented here is validated for a prescribed oscillatory shear and for an expansion driven by the motion at the boundary of a circular material by comparing numerical solutions to an analytical solution of the Maxwell model for viscoelasticity. Finally, an application of the modelling framework to cell biology is provided: passage of a cell through a microfluidic channel. We demonstrate that the rheology of the cell cytoplasm is important for capturing the transit time through a narrow channel in the presence of a pressure drop in the extracellular fluid.

In this paper, we consider the Stokes equations in a perforated domain. When the number of holes increases while their radius tends to 0, it is proven in Desvillettes et al. [J. Stat. Phys. 131 (2008) 941–967], under suitable dilution assumptions, that the solution is well approximated asymptotically by solving a Stokes–Brinkman equation. We provide here quantitative estimates in $L^{p}$-norms of this convergence.

This paper presents topology optimization of capillary, the typical two-phase flow with immiscible fluids, where the level set method and diffuse-interface model are combined to implement the proposed method. The two-phase flow is described by the diffuse-interface model with essential no slip condition imposed on the wall, where the singularity at the contact line is regularized by the molecular diffusion at the interface between two immiscible fluids. The level set method is utilized to express the fluid and solid phases in the flows and the wall energy at the implicit fluid-solid interface. Based on the variational procedure for the total free energy of two-phase flow, the Cahn-Hilliard equations for the diffuse-interface model are modified for the two-phase flow with implicit boundary expressed by the level set method. Then the topology optimization problem for the two-phase flow is constructed for the cost functional with general formulation. The sensitivity analysis is implemented by using the continuous adjoint method. The level set function is evolved by solving the Hamilton-Jacobian equation, and numerical test is carried out for capillary to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed topology optimization method. It is straightforward to extend this proposed method into the other two-phase flows with two immiscible fluids.

A robust residual-based a posteriori error estimator is proposed for a weak Galerkin finite element method for the Stokes problem in two and three dimensions. The estimator consists of two terms, where the first term characterises the difference between the L2-projection of the velocity approximation on the element interfaces and the corresponding numerical trace, and the second is related to the jump of the velocity approximation between the adjacent elements. We show that the estimator is reliable and efficient through two estimates of global upper and global lower bounds, up to two data oscillation terms caused by the source term and the nonhomogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition. The estimator is also robust in the sense that the constant factors in the upper and lower bounds are independent of the viscosity coefficient. Numerical results are provided to verify the theoretical results.