🔬 Category

physics.flu-dyn

1179 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.

Quantifying Injection-Driven Mass Transfer within Porous Media via Time-Elapsed X-ray micro-Computed Tomography

This study evaluates three analytical frameworks for quantifying injection-driven mass transfer in porous media using time-lapse X-ray micro-CT, introducing a volume-ratio filtering technique to mitigate dissolution-driven biases and demonstrating that while all methods yield comparable average mass transfer coefficients, the choice of approach ultimately depends on the trade-off between desired physical detail and available computational resources.

Christopher A. Allison, Ruotong Huang, Anindityo Patmonoaji, Lydia Knuefing, Anna L. Herring2026-04-10🔬 physics

Evidence of an inertialess Kapitza instability due to viscosity stratification

This paper demonstrates that continuous viscosity stratification in gravity-driven falling films can induce a surface-mode instability in the zero-inertia (Stokes) limit, driven by a phase shift between perturbation vorticity and interface displacement that reinforces deformation, thereby extending the class of scalar-mediated, inertialess instabilities beyond traditional surfactant-driven Marangoni effects.

Shravya Gundavarapu, Darish Jeswin Dhas, Anubhab Roy2026-04-10🔬 physics

Biogenic bubbles enable microbial escape from physical confinement

This study reveals that immotile microbial colonies, such as yeast, can achieve long-range dispersal in physically confining environments by metabolically generating CO2_2 bubbles that fracture the surrounding matrix and hydrodynamically entrain cells, establishing a novel mode of population-scale motion termed "metabolically driven active matter."

Babak Vajdi Hokmabad, Thomas Appleford, Hao Nghi Luu, Meera Ramaswamy, Maziyar Jalaal, Sujit S. Datta2026-04-10🔬 physics

Viscoelastic Droplet Impact on Surfaces with Sharp Wettability Contrast: Coupled Influence of Relaxation Time and Surface Tension

This numerical study employs a high-fidelity 3D OpenFOAM solver to demonstrate that increasing viscoelastic relaxation time significantly enhances droplet spreading and reduces height, whereas higher surface tension suppresses expansion, while sharp wettability contrasts on hybrid surfaces induce asymmetric spreading and distinctive equilibrium morphologies driven by the coupled effects of elastic energy storage and capillary forces.

Mahmood Mousavi, Parisa Tayerani, Sebastian Stephens, Cadence Ruskowski, Bok Jik Lee2026-04-10🔬 physics

Tuning Cross-stream Lift in Viscoelastic Shear: Distinct Hydrodynamic Signatures of Force-bearing and Force-free Mechanisms

This paper demonstrates that in viscoelastic shear flows, the direction of cross-stream lift on a driven particle reverses depending on whether the driving mechanism is force-bearing or force-free, a phenomenon attributed to distinct hydrodynamic disturbances and polymeric stress distributions, while streamwise drag corrections remain consistent across both mechanisms.

Soumyodeep Chowdhury, Kushagra Tiwari, Jitendra Dhakar, Akash Choudhary2026-04-10🔬 physics

Porosity and Material Disorder Drive Distinct Channelization Transition

By deriving and validating a continuum model for flow-porosity coupling, this study reveals that while disorder in erosion resistance requires a finite threshold to trigger discontinuous channelization, even infinitesimal initial porosity fluctuations are sufficient to destabilize homogeneous flow and induce persistent channel formation.

André F. V. Matias, Rodrigo C. V. Coelho, Humberto A. Carmona, José S. Andrade Jr., Nuno A. M. Araújo2026-04-10🔬 physics

Spatiotemporally Resolved Multi-Scalar Measurements of Methane Tulip Flames in a Square Channel

This study utilizes time-synchronized, multi-plane dual-color PLIF measurements in a reduced-pressure square channel to generate a spatiotemporally resolved 3-D dataset of temperature and OH concentration, revealing the role of wall heat loss and thermal boundary layer dynamics in the formation and evolution of methane tulip flames to aid future theoretical modeling and numerical simulations.

Zeyu Yan, Shengkai Wang2026-04-10🔬 physics

Cavity-Stabilized Rotating Flames in a Circular Hele-Shaw Burner

This paper reports direct experimental observations of self-organized rotating premixed flames in a circular Hele-Shaw burner, characterizing their transition from single-headed to multi-headed patterns and eventually to steady ring-shaped flames across various flow rates and fuels, while identifying a critical mass flow rate for the rotating-steady transition that is insensitive to equivalence ratio, gap distance, and fuel type.

Xiangyu Nie, Shengkai Wang2026-04-10🔬 physics

Effects of Soret diffusion on the intrinsic instability of premixed hydrogen/air flames

This study utilizes counterflow analysis and direct numerical simulations to demonstrate that Soret diffusion significantly alters the intrinsic instability of premixed hydrogen/air flames by accelerating small-scale wrinkling in lean conditions, reducing large-scale finger structures, and ultimately decreasing global fuel consumption despite increased local flame speeds.

Qizhe Wen, Yan Wang, Linlin Yang, Youhi Morii, Thorsten Zirwes, Shengkai Wang, Zheng Chen2026-04-10🔬 physics