The subcritical transition to turbulence of Faraday waves in miscible fluids

We study the development and the breaking process of standing waves at the interface between two miscible fluids of small density contrast. In our experiment, a subharmonic wave is generated by a time-periodic vertical acceleration via the Faraday instability. It is shown that its wavelength may be...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of fluid mechanics Vol. 934
Main Authors Cavelier, M., Gréa, B.-J., Briard, A., Gostiaux, L.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 10.03.2022
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subjects
Acceleration
Amplitudes
Destabilization
Experiments
Fluid flow
Fluid mechanics
Fluids
Interfaces
JFM Papers
Mechanics
Miscibility
Nodes (standing waves)
Physics
Simulation
Slopes
Stability analysis
Standing waves
Tank geometry
Turbulence
Turbulent mixing
Wave amplitude
Wave slope
Wavelength
Faraday waves
parametric instability
transition to turbulence
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Summary:We study the development and the breaking process of standing waves at the interface between two miscible fluids of small density contrast. In our experiment, a subharmonic wave is generated by a time-periodic vertical acceleration via the Faraday instability. It is shown that its wavelength may be selected not only by the linear process predicted by the Floquet theory and favouring the most unstable modes allowed by the tank geometry, but also by a nonlinear mode competition mechanism giving the preference to subcritical modes. Subsequently, as the standing wave amplitude grows, a secondary destabilization process occurs at smaller scales and produces turbulent mixing at the nodes. We explain this phenomenon as a subcritical parametric resonance instability. Different approaches derived from local and global stability analysis are proposed to predict the critical wave steepness. These theories are then assessed against various numerical and experimental data varying the frequencies and amplitudes of the forcing acceleration.
ISSN:0022-1120
1469-7645
DOI:10.1017/jfm.2021.1124