Instability of a dusty Kolmogorov flow

TL;DR

This paper studies how suspensions of heavy particles affect the stability of Kolmogorov flow, revealing that particle effects can both stabilize and destabilize the flow depending on particle inertia and concentration.

Contribution

It introduces a multiple scale expansion analysis of particle-laden Kolmogorov flow and uncovers non-monotonic stability behavior at large Stokes numbers.

Findings

Particles destabilize flow at small Stokes numbers.

At large Stokes numbers, particles can both stabilize and destabilize flow.

Numerical analysis shows limitations of the analytical model due to scale separation breakdown.

Abstract

Suspended particles can significantly alter the fluid properties and, in particular, can modify the transition from laminar to turbulent flow. We investigate the effect of heavy particle suspensions on the linear stability of the Kolmogorov flow by means of a multiple scale expansion of the Eulerian model originally proposed by Saffman (1962). We find that, while at small Stokes numbers particles always destabilize the flow (as already predicted by Saffman in the limit of very thin particles), at sufficiently large Stokes numbers the effect is non-monotonic in the particle mass fraction and particles can both stabilize and destabilize the flow. Numerical analysis is used to validate the analytical predictions. We find that in a region of the parameter space the multiple-scale expansion overestimates the stability of the flow and that this is a consequence of the breakdown of the scale separation assumptions.