🔬 Category

physics.flu-dyn

967 papers

Fluid dynamics explores how liquids and gases move, shaping everything from weather patterns to the flow of blood through our veins. This field bridges the gap between abstract mathematical equations and the tangible forces that drive our physical world, offering insights into turbulence, aerodynamics, and fluid behavior in complex environments.

On Gist.Science, we process every new preprint in this category directly from arXiv to make cutting-edge research accessible to everyone. Each paper is transformed into a clear, plain-language overview alongside a detailed technical summary, ensuring both students and experts can grasp the latest findings without getting lost in dense jargon.

Below, you will find the most recent studies in fluid dynamics, curated and explained for a broader audience.

Direct Numerical Simulation of Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine Near-Wake Dynamics

This study employs geometrically-resolved Direct Numerical Simulations to reveal that increasing the blade count in vertical-axis wind turbines accelerates the breakdown of dynamic stall vortices through blade-vortex interactions, causing the near-wake to transition more rapidly to bluff-body dynamics and demonstrating that blade number, rather than tip-speed ratio, is the primary factor governing this transition and downstream inflow characteristics.

Harry Dunn, Mohsen Lahooti2026-05-28🔬 physics

Sparse POD Mode Selection and Manifold Dimensionality Reduction with Neural Networks

This paper introduces SparseModesNet, a novel dimensionality reduction framework that combines linear POD encoding with a LassoNet-based nonlinear decoder to simultaneously select informative modes and learn an expressive mapping, significantly outperforming existing methods in reconstructing advection-dominated and turbulent flows while maintaining interpretability.

Tomoki Koike, Prakash Mohan, Marc T. Henry de Frahan, Elizabeth Qian, Julie Bessac2026-05-28🔬 physics

Data-efficient semi-supervised learning for flow estimation using unlabelled probe data

This paper proposes a data-efficient semi-supervised learning framework that leverages unlabelled high-frequency probe data to enhance the temporal resolution and physical consistency of velocity and pressure field reconstructions from sparse Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements, thereby improving accuracy without increasing experimental costs.

Junwei Chen, Marco Raiola, Stefano Discetti2026-05-28🔬 physics

Peristaltic pumping in short annular geometries: An experimental approach for studying Glymphatic flow

This study presents a novel experimental setup using particle tracking velocimetry in a refractive-index matched short annular channel to demonstrate that peristaltic pumping can generate net axial fluid transport despite the channel's length being orders of magnitude shorter than the peristaltic wavelength, thereby providing direct evidence for the viability of peristaltic mechanisms in driving glymphatic flow.

Shahaf Ella Salach, Ron Shnapp2026-05-28🔬 physics

Bow-shock instability in entry, descent, and landing vehicles under high-enthalpy conditions

This paper demonstrates that under high-enthalpy Mars-entry conditions, freestream disturbances can trigger a three-step instability mechanism within the detached bow shock and shear-entropy layer, leading to nonlinear breakdown and significantly enhanced wall heating that explains flight data from Mars missions without requiring classical boundary-layer transition.

Adrián Antón-Álvarez, Adrián Lozano-Durán2026-05-28🔬 physics

Wigner-Eckart Factorization of the Spectral Boltzmann Collision Operator

This paper presents a Wigner-Eckart factorization of the spectral Boltzmann collision operator that reduces the problem's dimensionality from eight to five by aligning the frame with colliding pairs, thereby decoupling angular geometry from scattering physics to achieve significant computational speedups and memory reductions while maintaining exact conservation laws and high precision.

René R. Hiemstra, Torsten Keßler, Michael R. A. Abdelmalik2026-05-28🔬 physics

Parametric Subharmonic Instability in the Ocean Bottom Boundary Layer

This paper demonstrates through linear stability analysis and nonlinear simulations that parametric subharmonic instability, driven by wave shear and buoyancy production in baroclinic bottom boundary layers along sloping topography, serves as a viable mechanism for generating near-bottom oceanic mixing by lowering the minimum internal wave frequency to allow instability in near-inertial waves.

Logan Knudsen, Jacob Wenegrat, James Hilditch, Leif Thomas2026-05-28🔬 physics

Geometric Origin of Macroscopic Alignment in Granular Flows

This paper demonstrates that the macroscopic alignment of non-spherical particles in dense granular flows is fundamentally governed by particle boundary geometry, specifically through a mapping between local curvature and contact normal distribution that accurately predicts the nematic order parameter across diverse particle shapes and aspect ratios.

Christopher Harper, Eric C. P. Breard, George W. Bergantz, PJ Zrelak2026-05-28🔬 cond-mat