Search

During the last decade, forcing and response modes produced by resolvent analysis have demonstrated great potential to guide sensor and actuator placement and design in flow control applications. However, resolvent modes are frequency-dependent, which, although responsible for their success in identifying scale interactions in turbulence, complicates their use for control purposes. In this work, we seek orthogonal bases of forcing and response modes that are the most responsive and receptive, respectively, across all frequencies. We show that these frequency-independent bases of \emph{representative} resolvent modes are given by the eigenvectors of the observability and controllability Gramians of the system considering full state inputs and outputs. We present several numerical examples where we leverage these bases by building orthogonal or interpolatory projectors onto the dominant forcing and response subspaces. Gramian-based forcing modes are used to identify dynamically relevant disturbances, to place point sensors to measure disturbances, and to design actuators for feedforward control in the subcritical linearized Ginzburg--Landau equation. Gramian-based response modes are used to identify coherent structures and for point sensor placement aiming at state reconstruction in the turbulent flow in a minimal channel at $\mathrm{Re}_{\tau}=185$. The approach does not require data snapshots and relies only on knowledge of the steady or mean flow.

We develop a data-driven characterization of the pilot-wave hydrodynamic system in which a bouncing droplet self-propels along the surface of a vibrating bath. We consider drop motion in a confined one-dimensional geometry, and apply the {\em Dynamic mode decomposition} (DMD) in order to characterize the evolution of the wave field as the bath's vibrational acceleration is increased progressively. DMD provides a regression framework for adaptively learning a best-fit linear dynamics model over snapshots of spatio-temporal data. The DMD characterization of the wave field yields a fresh perspective on the bouncing-droplet problem that forges valuable new links with the mathematical machinery of quantum mechanics. Moreover, it provides a low-rank characterization of the bifurcation structure of the pilot wave physics. Specifically, the analysis shows that as the vibrational acceleration is increased, the pilot-wave field undergoes a series of Hopf bifurcations that ultimately lead to a chaotic wave field. The established relation between the mean pilot-wave field and the droplet statistics allows us to characterize the evolution of the emergent statistics with increased vibrational forcing from the evolution of the pilot-wave field. We thus develop a numerical framework with the same basic structure as quantum mechanics, specifically a wave theory that predicts particle statistics., Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures

In this work, we demonstrate how physical principles -- such as symmetries, invariances, and conservation laws -- can be integrated into the dynamic mode decomposition (DMD). DMD is a widely-used data analysis technique that extracts low-rank modal structures and dynamics from high-dimensional measurements. However, DMD frequently produces models that are sensitive to noise, fail to generalize outside the training data, and violate basic physical laws. Our physics-informed DMD (piDMD) optimization, which may be formulated as a Procrustes problem, restricts the family of admissible models to a matrix manifold that respects the physical structure of the system. We focus on five fundamental physical principles -- conservation, self-adjointness, localization, causality, and shift-invariance -- and derive several closed-form solutions and efficient algorithms for the corresponding piDMD optimizations. With fewer degrees of freedom, piDMD models are less prone to overfitting, require less training data, and are often less computationally expensive to build than standard DMD models. We demonstrate piDMD on a range of challenging problems in the physical sciences, including energy-preserving fluid flow, travelling-wave systems, the Schr\"odinger equation, solute advection-diffusion, a system with causal dynamics, and three-dimensional transitional channel flow. In each case, piDMD significantly outperforms standard DMD in metrics such as spectral identification, state prediction, and estimation of optimal forcings and responses., Comment: 36 pages, 9 figures

Early research in aerodynamics and biological propulsion was dramatically advanced by the analytical solutions of Theodorsen, von K\'{a}rm\'{a}n, Wu and others. While these classical solutions apply only to isolated swimmers, the flow interactions between multiple swimmers are relevant to many practical applications, including the schooling and flocking of animal collectives. In this work, we derive a class of solutions that describe the hydrodynamic interactions between an arbitrary number of swimmers in a two-dimensional inviscid fluid. Our approach is rooted in multiply-connected complex analysis and exploits several recent results. Specifically, the transcendental (Schottky-Klein) prime function serves as the basic building block to construct the appropriate conformal maps and leading-edge-suction functions, which allows us to solve the modified Schwarz problem that arises. As such, our solutions generalize classical thin aerofoil theory, specifically Wu's waving-plate analysis, to the case of multiple swimmers. For the case of a pair of interacting swimmers, we develop an efficient numerical implementation that allows rapid computations of the forces on each swimmer. We investigate flow-mediated equilibria and find excellent agreement between our new solutions and previously reported experimental results. Our solutions recover and unify disparate results in the literature, thereby opening the door for future studies into the interactions between multiple swimmers., Comment: 44 pages, 15 figures

Research in modern data-driven dynamical systems is typically focused on the three key challenges of high dimensionality, unknown dynamics, and nonlinearity. The dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) has emerged as a cornerstone for modeling high-dimensional systems from data. However, the quality of the linear DMD model is known to be fragile with respect to strong nonlinearity, which contaminates the model estimate. In contrast, sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) learns fully nonlinear models, disambiguating the linear and nonlinear effects, but is restricted to low-dimensional systems. In this work, we present a kernel method that learns interpretable data-driven models for high-dimensional, nonlinear systems. Our method performs kernel regression on a sparse dictionary of samples that appreciably contribute to the underlying dynamics. We show that this kernel method efficiently handles high-dimensional data and is flexible enough to incorporate partial knowledge of system physics. It is possible to accurately recover the linear model contribution with this approach, disambiguating the effects of the implicitly defined nonlinear terms, resulting in a DMD-like model that is robust to strongly nonlinear dynamics. We demonstrate our approach on data from a wide range of nonlinear ordinary and partial differential equations that arise in the physical sciences. This framework can be used for many practical engineering tasks such as model order reduction, diagnostics, prediction, control, and discovery of governing laws., Comment: 44 pages, 12 figures

Resolvent analysis identifies the most responsive forcings and most receptive states of a dynamical system, in an input--output sense, based on its governing equations. Interest in the method has continued to grow during the past decade due to its potential to reveal structures in turbulent flows, to guide sensor/actuator placement, and for flow control applications. However, resolvent analysis requires access to high-fidelity numerical solvers to produce the linearized dynamics operator. In this work, we develop a purely data-driven algorithm to perform resolvent analysis to obtain the leading forcing and response modes, without recourse to the governing equations, but instead based on snapshots of the transient evolution of linearly stable flows. The formulation of our method follows from two established facts: $1)$ dynamic mode decomposition can approximate eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the underlying operator governing the evolution of a system from measurement data, and $2)$ a projection of the resolvent operator onto an invariant subspace can be built from this learned eigendecomposition. We demonstrate the method on numerical data of the linearized complex Ginzburg--Landau equation and of three-dimensional transitional channel flow, and discuss data requirements. The ability to perform resolvent analysis in a completely equation-free and adjoint-free manner will play a significant role in lowering the barrier of entry to resolvent research and applications.

We present an extension of the AAA (adaptive Antoulas--Anderson) algorithm for periodic functions, called 'AAAtrig'. The algorithm uses the key steps of AAA approximation by (i) representing the approximant in (trigonometric) barycentric form and (ii) selecting the support points greedily. Accordingly, AAAtrig inherits all the favourable characteristics of AAA and is thus extremely flexible and robust, being able to consider quite general sets of sample points in the complex plane. We consider a range of applications with particular emphasis on solving Laplace's equation in periodic domains and compressing periodic conformal maps. These results reproduce the tapered exponential clustering effect observed in other recent studies. The algorithm is implemented in Chebfun., Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, submitted to SISC

We present a constructive procedure for the calculation of 2-D potential flows in periodic domains with multiple boundaries per period window. The solution requires two steps: (i) a conformal mapping from a canonical circular domain to the physical target domain, and (ii) the construction of the complex potential inside the circular domain. All singly periodic domains may be classified into three distinct types: unbounded in two directions, unbounded in one direction, and bounded. In each case, we relate the target periodic domain to a canonical circular domain via conformal mapping and present the functional form of prototypical conformal maps for each type of target domain. We then present solutions for a range of potential flow phenomena including flow singularities, moving boundaries, uniform flows, straining flows and circulatory flows. By phrasing the solutions in terms of the transcendental Schottky--Klein prime function, the ensuing solutions are valid for an arbitrary number of obstacles per period window. Moreover, our solutions are exact and do not require any asymptotic approximations., Comment: 29 pages; 7 figures; submitted to TCFD in Dec 2019

"Ground effect" refers to the enhanced performance enjoyed by fliers or swimmers operating close to the ground. We derive a number of exact solutions for this phenomenon, thereby elucidating the underlying physical mechanisms involved in ground effect. Unlike previous analytic studies, our solutions are not restricted to particular parameter regimes such as "weak" or "extreme" ground effect, and do not even require thin aerofoil theory. Moreover, the solutions are valid for a hitherto intractable range of flow phenomena including point vortices, uniform and straining flows, unsteady motions of the wing, and the Kutta condition. We model the ground effect as the potential flow past a wing inclined above a flat wall. The solution of the model requires two steps: firstly, a coordinate transformation between the physical domain and a concentric annulus, and secondly, the solution of the potential flow problem inside the annulus. We show that both steps can be solved by introducing a new special function which is straightforward to compute. Moreover, the ensuing solutions are simple to express and offer new insight into the mathematical structure of ground effect. In order to identify the missing physics in our potential flow model, we compare our solutions against new experimental data. The experiments show that boundary layer separation on the wing and wall occurs at small angles of attack, and we suggest ways in which our model could be extended to account for these effects., Comment: Main body: 10 pages & 3 figures; supplementary material: 6 pages & 5 figures. Submitted to JFM Rapids

We present a solution for the scattered field caused by an incident wave interacting with an infinite cascade of blades with complex boundary conditions. This extends previous studies by allowing the blades to be compliant, porous or satisfying a generalised impedance condition. Beginning with the convected wave equation, we employ Fourier transforms to obtain an integral equation amenable to the Wiener--Hopf method. This Wiener--Hopf system is solved using a method that avoids the factorisation of matrix functions. The Fourier transform is inverted to obtain an expression for the acoustic potential function that is valid throughout the entire domain. We observe that the principal effect of complex boundary conditions is to perturb the zeros of the Wiener--Hopf kernel, which correspond to the duct modes in the inter-blade region. We focus efforts on understanding the role of porosity, and present a range of results on sound transmission and generation. The behaviour of the duct modes is discussed in detail in order to explain the physical mechanisms behind the associated noise reductions. In particular, we show that cut-on duct modes do not exist for arbitrary porosity coefficients. Conversely, the acoustic modes are unchanged by modifications to the boundary conditions. Consequently, we observe that even modest values of porosity can result in reductions in the sound power level of $5$ dB for the first mode and $20$ dB for the second mode. The solution is essentially analytic (the only numerical requirements are matrix inversion and root finding) and is therefore extremely rapid to compute., Comment: 40 pages

We extend unsteady thin aerofoil theory to model aerofoils with generalised chordwise porosity distributions. The analysis considers a linearised porosity boundary condition where the seepage velocity through the aerofoil is related to the local pressure jump across the aerofoil surface and to the unsteady characteristics of the porous medium. Application of the Plemelj formulae to the resulting boundary value problem yields a singular Fredholm--Volterra integral equation which does not admit an analytic solution. Accordingly, we develop a numerical solution scheme by expanding the bound vorticity distribution in terms of appropriate basis functions. Asymptotic analysis at the leading- and trailing-edges reveals that the appropriate basis functions are weighted Jacobi polynomials whose parameters are related to the porosity distribution. The Jacobi polynomial basis enables the construction of a numerical scheme that is accurate and rapid, in contrast to the standard choice of Chebyshev basis functions that are shown to {be unsuitable} for porous aerofoils. Applications of the numerical solution scheme to discontinuous porosity profiles, quasi-static problems, and the separation of circulatory and non-circulatory contributions are presented. Analogues to the classical Theodorsen and Sears functions are computed numerically, which show that an effect of trailing-edge porosity is to reduce the amount of vorticity shed into the wake, thereby reducing the magnitude of the circulatory lift. {Fourier transform inversion of these frequency-domain functions produces porous extensions to the Wagner and K\"{u}ssner functions for transient aerofoil motions or gust encounters, respectively.}, Comment: 39 pages