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Microseismicity in subsurface geologic environments, such as sandstone gas reservoirs, is expected in the presence of liquid or gas injection. Although difficult to predict, the potential for microseismic events is important to field-scale projects, such as geologic storage of CO2 whereby the gas is injected into natural sandstone formations. We conjecture that a primary factor causing microseismicity is the existence of metastable states in granular porous medium and provide experimental evidence for its validity. External perturbation trigger abrupt relaxation events, which, with a certain probability, can grow into macroscopic microseismic events. Here the triggering perturbation is produced by cooling to a cryogenic temperature. As the "sensor" for the abrupt relaxation events we use thin Al films deposited on the sandstone surface. We show that as the temperature is varied, the films' resistance exhibits sharp jumps, which we attribute to mechanical restructuring or microfractures in the fabric of the sandstone. We checked the superconducting characteristics of the Al thin films on the sandstone and found microwave-induced Shapiro steps on the voltage-current diagrams. Such quantized steps provide indicates that the film is made of a network of nanobridges, which makes it ever more sensitive to abrupt relaxation events occurring in the substrate, i.e., in the underlying sandstone.

Nanosecond electroluminescence (EL) overshoots observed when multilayer blue 4,4′-bis(2,2′-diphenyl vinyl)-1,1′-biphenyl (DPVBi)-based organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) are excited by rectangular voltage pulses are described. The overshoots occur at the voltage turn-off and exceed the cw brightness by up to an order of magnitude. Time-resolved images of the OLEDs demonstrate that the emission from most of the sample surface decays with a single time constant τ1=13±3 ns. This decay is attributed to recombination of charges which accumulate at the interface of the electron and hole transporting layers, possibly at intrinsic trapping sites. In areas of increased electron injection and EL, such as cathode edges and morphological defects, a second slower decay time 20 ns

In liquid-liquid flows, use of optical diagnostics is limited by interphase refractive index mismatch, which leads to optical distortion and complicates data interpretation, and sometimes also by opacity. Both problems can be eliminated using a surrogate pair of immiscible index-matched transparent liquids, whose density and viscosity ratios match corresponding ratios for the original liquid pair. We show that a wide range of density and viscosity ratios is accessible using aqueous solutions of 1,2-propanediol and CsBr (for which index, density, and viscosity are available), and solutions of light and heavy silicone oils and 1-bromooctane (for which we measured the same properties at 119 compositions). For each liquid phase, polynomials in the composition variables, least-squares fitted to index and density and to the logarithm of kinematic viscosity, were used to determine accessible density and viscosity ratios for each matchable index. Index-matched solution pairs can be prepared with density and viscosity ratios equal to those for water-liquid CO2 at 0 °C over a range of pressure (allowing water-liquid CO2 behavior at inconveniently high pressure to be simulated by 1-bar experiments), and for water-crude oil and water-trichloroethylene (avoiding opacity and toxicity problems, respectively), each over a range of temperature. For representative index-matched solutions, equilibration changes index, density, and viscosity only slightly, and mass spectrometry and elemental analysis show that no component of either phase has significant interphase solubility. Finally, procedures are described for iteratively reducing the residual index mismatch in surrogate solution pairs prepared on the basis of approximate polynomial fits to experimental data, and for systematically dealing with nonzero interphase solubility.

In studies of turbulent boundary layers at high Reynolds number, the term “roughness transition” is generally an implicit reference to the case of a streamwise step-change in roughness length (whether the roughness length is associated with surface fluxes of momentum, temperature, humidity, or some other quantity). This roughness configuration and flow response has received broad attention. Here, in contrast, we consider turbulent wall-bounded flows over transverse roughness transitions using large-eddy simulation. This is accomplished simply by aligning the boundary layer freestream direction parallel to momentum roughness length transitions, instead of perpendicular. In the present cases, the bounding surface is composed of two “high roughness” strips placed between three “low roughness” strips. The influences of two parameters are evaluated: (1) λ, the ratio of the high roughness length to the low roughness length; and (2) Ls, the width of the high roughness strips. In the immediate vicinity of the roughness change, the abrupt wallstress variation induces transverse turbulent mixing which is the source of a δ-scale secondary flow, recently described as a low momentum pathway (LMP) by Mejia-Alvarez et al. [“Structural attributes of turbulent flow over a complex topography,” Coherent Flow Structures at the Earth's Surface (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), Chap. 3, pp. 25–42] and Mejia-Alvarez and Christensen [“Wall-parallel stereo PIV measurements in the roughness sublayer of turbulent flow overlying highly-irregular roughness,” Phys. Fluids, 25, 115109]. LMPs are spatially stationary and flanked by δ-scale counter-rotating vortices which serve to pump fluid vertically from the wall, ultimately leading to a spanwise variation in the boundary layer depth (for flows over surface roughness with a converging-diverging riblet pattern, spanwise variation of δ was also found in recent experiments by Nugroho et al. [“Large-scale spanwise periodicity in a turbulent boundary layer induced by highly ordered and direction surface roughness,” Int. J. Heat Fluid Flow 41, 90–102 (2013)]. Mean velocity and transverse Reynolds stresses are used to determine the mixing length associated with transverse mixing. In general, we find that variations in Ls and λ have a strong and mild impact on the secondary flow pattern, respectively.

Stereo particle-image velocimetry measurements were conducted in a streamwise–spanwise (x − z) plane deep within the roughness sublayer (y = 0.047δ; δ is the boundary-layer thickness) of a zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layer overlying highly irregular surface roughness replicated from a turbine blade damaged by foreign-material deposition. The ensemble-averaged streamwise velocity defect revealed the tendency of the roughness to promote channeling of the flow in the form of low-momentum pathways (LMPs) and high-momentum pathways. Enhanced turbulent and vortical activity was observed both between and along the spanwise boundaries of these streamwise-elongated pathways. In particular, streamwise pathways of wall-normal vortex cores of opposing rotational sense were observed along the spanwise boundaries of the identified LMP in the rough-wall flow. Conditional averaging revealed that these counter-rotating vortical motions are associated with streamwise flow against the mean-flow direction and could perhaps be the origination mechanism of the LMPs. Two-point correlation coefficients of velocity and swirling strength reflected large-scale streamwise coherence of these quantities along and outboard of the identified LMP in the rough-wall flow, supporting the notion that the motions responsible for the LMP have large-scale, streamwise coherence. Finally, the influence of different topographical scales of the roughness on the flow in the roughness sublayer was explored using low-order models of the original, full surface as originally proposed by R. Mejia-Alvarez and K. T. Christensen [Phys. Fluids 22(1), 015106 (2010)]. While a model containing only the largest topographical scales qualitatively reproduced the features of the full-surface flow, additional intermediate topographical scales were required to quantitatively reproduce the statistical and structural nature of the full-surface flow in the roughness sublayer.

The present effort explores the relative impact of various topographical scales present within irregular surface roughness on a turbulent boundary layer under both developing- and developed-flow conditions. Low-order representations of highly irregular surface roughness replicated from a turbine-blade damaged by deposition of foreign materials were generated using singular value decomposition to decompose the complex topography into a set of topographical basis functions of decreasing importance to the original (“full”) surface character. The low-order surface models were then formed by truncating the full set of basis functions at the first 5 and 16 modes (containing approximately 71% and 95% of the full surface content, respectively) so that only the most dominant and large-scale topographical features were included in the models, while the finer-scale surface details are excluded. Physical replications of the full surface and the two low-order models were created using rapid prototyping methods to gene...

The maturation of flow in microscale capillaries (D=536 μm) from a laminar to a turbulent state is studied via extensive microscopic particle image velocimetry measurements spanning the Reynolds-number range of 1900≤Re≤4500. Some previous studies of transition to turbulence in microscale passages have observed transition at anomalously low Re, leading to the suggestion that flow at these scales is fundamentally different from that at the macroscale. One possible culprit for these reports of early transition could be significant surface roughness in the microchannels employed. As such, care is taken in the present experiments to select microscale capillaries with minimal inner surface roughness in order to remove the possibility that roughness could trigger early transition. Consistent with transitional wall-bounded flows at the macroscale, transitional capillary flow is found to contain patches of increasingly disordered motion with increasing Re bounded by laminar flow behavior. The intensity and frequen...

High-resolution particle image velocimetry measurements are made in the streamwise–wall-normal plane of a zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layer over smooth and rough walls at Reθ≈13000. The roughness considered herein is replicated from a surface scan of a turbine blade damaged by deposition of foreign materials and its topography is highly irregular and contains a broad range of topographical scales. Two physical scalings of the same roughness topography are considered, yielding two different rough surfaces: RF1 with k=4.2mm and RF2 with k=2.1mm, where k is the average peak-to-valley roughness height. At Reθ≈13000, these roughness conditions yield k+≡k∕y*=207, δ∕k=28, ks+=115, and δ∕ks=48 for RF1 and k+=91, δ∕k=50, ks+=29, and δ∕ks=162 for RF2 (where δ is the boundary-layer thickness, ks is the equivalent sand-grain height, and y* is the viscous length scale). The mean velocity deficits along with the Reynolds normal and shear stress profiles for both roughness conditions collapse on the smooth...