Hydrodynamic stress correlations in fluid films driven by stochastic surface forcing

TL;DR

This paper investigates the fluctuations of hydrodynamic stresses in a viscous, compressible fluid film between two plates, driven by stochastic surface forcing, revealing universal power-law decay behaviors in stress correlations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of stress correlation functions in a confined fluid under stochastic forcing, highlighting universal decay exponents and differences between transverse and longitudinal stresses.

Findings

Power-law decay of stress correlations with separation

Different decay exponents for self- and cross-correlations

Longitudinal stress correlations exhibit weaker decay at large separations

Abstract

We study hydrodynamic fluctuations in a compressible and viscous fluid film confined between two rigid, no-slip, parallel plates, where one of the plates is kept fixed, while the other one is driven in small-amplitude, translational, displacements around its reference position. This jiggling motion is assumed to be driven by a stochastic, external, surface forcing of zero mean and finite variance. Thus, while the transverse (shear) and longitudinal (compressional) hydrodynamic stresses produced in the film vanish on average on either of the plates, these stresses exhibit fluctuations that can be quantified through their equal-time, two-point, correlation functions. For transverse stresses, we show that the correlation functions of the stresses acting on the same plate (self-correlators) as well as the correlation function of the stresses acting on different plates (cross-correlators) exhibit universal, decaying, power-law behaviors as functions of the inter-plate separation. At small separations, the exponents are given by -1, while at large separations, the exponents are found as -2 (self-correlator on the fixed plate), -4 (excess self-correlator on the mobile plate) and -3 (cross-correlator). For longitudinal stresses, we find much weaker power-law decays in the large separation regime, with exponents -3/2 (excess self-correlator on the mobile plate) and -1 (cross-correlator). The self-correlator on the fixed plate increases and levels off upon increasing the inter-plate separation, reflecting the non-decaying nature of the longitudinal forces acting on the fixed plate.