Continuous Pathway between the Elasto-Inertial and Elastic Turbulent States in Viscoelastic Channel Flow

Mohammad Khalid, V. Shankar, and Ganesh Subramanian
Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 134502 – Published 22 September 2021
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Abstract

Viscoelastic plane Poiseuille flow is shown to become linearly unstable in the absence of inertia, in the limit of high elasticities, for ultradilute polymer solutions. While inertialess elastic instabilities have been predicted for curvilinear shear flows, this is the first ever report of a purely elastic linear instability in a rectilinear shear flow. The novel instability continues up to a Reynolds number (Re) of O(1000), corresponding to the recently identified elasto-inertial turbulent state believed to underlie the maximum-drag-reduced regime. Thus, for highly elastic ultradilute polymer solutions, a single linearly unstable modal branch may underlie transition to elastic turbulence at zero Re and to elasto-inertial turbulence at moderate Re, implying the existence of continuous pathways connecting the turbulent states to each other and to the laminar base state.

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  • Received 22 March 2021
  • Revised 18 June 2021
  • Accepted 27 August 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.134502

© 2021 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Fluid Dynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Mohammad Khalid1, V. Shankar1,*, and Ganesh Subramanian2,†

  • 1Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208016, India
  • 2Engineering Mechanics Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore 560084, India

  • *vshankar@iitk.ac.in
  • sganesh@jncasr.ac.in

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Issue

Vol. 127, Iss. 13 — 24 September 2021

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