On the ridge of instability in ferrofluidic Couette flow via alternating magnetic field

Ferrofluidic wavy Taylor vortices under alternating magnetic field

Many natural and industrial flows are subject to time-dependent boundary conditions and temporal modulations (e.g. driving frequency), which significantly modify the dynamics compared with their static counterparts. The present problem addresses ferrofluidic wavy vortex flow in Taylor-Couette geometry, with the outer cylinder at rest in a spatially homogeneous magnetic field subject to an alternating modulation. Using a modified Niklas approximation, the effect of frequency modulation on nonlinear flow dynamics and appearing resonance phenomena are investigated in the context of either period doubling or inverse period doubling. This article is part of the theme issue 'Taylor-Couette and related flows on the centennial of Taylor's seminal Philosophical Transactions paper (part 1)'.

Simulating the flow of interacting ferrofluids with multiparticle collision dynamics

Ferrofluid flow is fascinating since its fluid properties can conveniently be manipulated by external magnetic fields. Novel applications in micro- and nanofluidics as well as in biomedicine have renewed the interest in the flow of colloidal magnetic nanoparticles with a focus on small-scale behavior. Traditional flow simulations of ferrofluids, however, often use simplified constitutive models and do not include fluctuations that are relevant at small scales. Here we address these challenges by proposing a hybrid scheme that combines the multiparticle collision dynamics method for modeling hydrodynamics with Brownian dynamics simulations of a reliable kinetic model describing the microstructure, magnetization dynamics, and resulting stresses. Since both multiparticle collision dynamics and Brownian dynamics are mesoscopic methods that naturally include fluctuations, this hybrid scheme presents a promising alternative to more traditional approaches, also because of the flexibility to model different geometries and modifying the constitutive model. The scheme was tested in several ways. Poiseuille flow was simulated for various model parameters and effective viscosities were determined from the resulting flow profiles. The effective, field-dependent viscosities are found to be in very good agreement with theoretical predictions. We also study Stokes' second flow problem for ferrofluids. For weak amplitudes and low frequencies of the oscillating plate, we find that the velocity profiles are well described by the result for Newtonian fluids at the corresponding, field-dependent viscosity. Furthermore, the time-dependent profiles of the nonequilibrum magnetization component are well approximated by their steady-state values in stationary shear when evaluated with the instantaneous local shear rate. Finally, we also apply our scheme to simulate ferrofluid shear flow over a rough surface. We find characteristic differences in the nonequilibrium magnetization components when the external field is oriented in flow and in a gradient direction.