Take and , with pointing along the imposed shear stress, and put . Relative to the upper fluid's hydrostatic reference, the hydrostatic pressure in the current is . Thus the horizontal pressure gradient is . The lubrication theory momentum balance, lower no-slip boundary condition, and imposed upper shear stress give
Its depth-integrated volume flux is
Define and . The continuity equation gives the shear-driven viscous gravity current equation
The two terms have opposite roles: imposed shear stress carries fluid downstream, whereas the hydrostatic pressure gradient spreads it from thick regions towards thin ones.
For the approximation, a representative horizontal velocity is , with vertical velocity . Small slopes require . Horizontal fluid inertia relative to vertical viscous resistance is , where . Hence sufficient small parameters, expressed without an unknown velocity, are
For the hydrostatic pressure and normal-stress approximation also require . Its gravity-driven part is already ; its shear-driven part adds
This condition controls viscous normal stress, vertical viscous corrections and the normal projection of shear at a slightly tilted interface relative to . With it and the previous inertia bounds, vertical inertia is small as well. Time variations here are on the transport timescale ; separately imposed rapid forcing would need its own unsteady inertia bound. A small ordinary Reynolds number is a stronger sufficient restriction, but the reduced inertia ratios above are what the thin-layer momentum balance directly requires.
In the steady far-downstream regime, cross-stream derivatives dominate gravity-driven spreading. Dropping the smaller downstream gravity flux leaves
Write and let be a typical central thickness. Balance gives , while conservation of the source volume flux gives . Therefore the downstream similarity of a shear-driven gravity current has
The omitted downstream gravity flux relative to the imposed shear flux is , so this approximation is self-consistent in the stated regime.
For the full profile put . Then and
This is a porous medium equation with downstream distance as its evolution coordinate. Conservation of and a similarity solution , , give
where symmetry gives zero integration constant at . Inside the positive region, , so . Requiring the total downstream volume flux to be fixes the coefficient:
Consequently
for , with outside. The squared height is a parabolic Barenblatt solution; the height cross-section is a semicircular profile after rescaling its axes. The cross-stream volume flux vanishes at the edges even though the height slope becomes singular there. The profile describes the outer lubrication theory region, not a resolved microscopic front.
Near the point source the two horizontal dimensions are comparable, say . Upstream spreading arrests where outward gravity-driven volume flux balances downstream shear-driven volume flux:
Eliminating gives
This is a scaling estimate, not a determination of a numerical prefactor. The associated depth is . The same horizontal scale is obtained by setting in the downstream similarity solution, confirming where that solution fails.
For the line source the steady volume flux per unit width is . On the downstream constant-height branch, gives . Upstream there is no net flux through the finite nose, so . Thus , and continuity of height at the source gives
The line-source upstream reach under imposed shear is therefore
In the upstream part, shear-driven and gravity-driven volume fluxes cancel. The volume flux per unit width jumps by exactly at the source. As in the point-source profile, the square-root nose is a formal outer solution with an unresolved steep front; its finite upstream reach follows from flux balance, not from assuming a small slope all the way to the nose.
Use the well-mixed natural ventilation model for a distributed floor source. Let the building height be , its volume be , its temperature excess be , and the exterior mass density be . Let be the coefficient of thermal expansion, so reduced gravity is . Convert the total heat input to the temperature-volume flux , where is specific heat capacity. If the quoted heat flux is per floor area, first multiply it by that area.
For effective opening area for pressure-driven ventilation, define the equal-opening hydraulic coefficient such that the signed throughflow obeys , with the total driving pressure divided by mass density. In the effective-area convention of question 6, each opening has discharge , so . The usual physical-area orifice law instead gives ; that prefactor does not affect the stability conclusions.
Set and . Positive denotes entry at the floor and exit at the roof. hydrostatic pressure and wind combine to give
Because the inflowing air is at exterior temperature in either direction, the heat budget is
The well-mixed ventilation temperature balance at steady state is therefore
All roots must satisfy and their appropriate flow-direction inequality; squaring a pressure relation without imposing those conditions could add spurious branches.
The assisting case has a unique positive solution and it is stable. For opposing wind, define . There is always one solution with , a buoyancy-dominated upward flow. Below , the heat-removal curve is . It is zero at both endpoints, and its maximum occurs at :
For there are two downward-flow roots as well as the upward-flow root. Equivalently, setting and , the equilibrium curve is
For linear stability analysis of the opposing-wind ventilation bistability, linearize the heat budget: the eigenvalue is . The cooler downward root has and , so it is stable. The warmer downward root has and , so it is unstable and separates the two basins. The upward root has and is stable. At the two downward roots merge at a saddle-node bifurcation; above that value only the upward equilibrium remains.
For ventilation switching under wind and heating changes, increasing wind pressure or decreasing heat input both reduce , so both can create the pair of wind-driven equilibria. They nevertheless have different physical and transient effects. On the hot upward branch, implicit differentiation of shows that increasing increases , while decreasing decreases . Both reduce the upward ventilation rate, but only a wind change shifts .
Under slow parameter variation, a state follows its current stable branch while that branch persists; the upward branch does not disappear when wind increases or heating decreases. A sufficiently large abrupt wind increase can raise beyond the current temperature and place that state below the new unstable threshold, causing flow reversal and cooling towards the wind-dominated equilibrium. A jump insufficient to cross its basin boundary returns to the upward equilibrium.
At fixed , reducing a still-positive heat input cannot force an initially upward-flow state through : at that boundary the temperature balance has . Thus heat reduction alone does not cause that reversal in this model. Conversely, decreasing wind or increasing heat from the stable downward branch eventually destroys it at the fold and forces a switch to the upward branch, giving history dependence. Wind strengthening and heat reduction have the same effect on the steady dimensionless control parameter, but not the same temperature change or switching dynamics. These stability statements use quasi-steady opening flow and a single well-mixed temperature; other stratification or airflow-inertia models require their own stability analysis.
Let be floor inflow and roof outflow. Use effective-area discharge , matching the factors in the supplied relations. With negligible source volume, both equal . The lower region has exterior mass density while the warm upper layer has reduced gravity and depth . hydrostatic pressure therefore supplies a total opening pressure head . Equal openings sharing equal discharge take half each, giving
Steady lower-layer volume conservation sets this ventilation rate equal to the entrained turbulent plume flux at the interface, . Upper-layer buoyancy conservation gives . These are the required balances for displacement ventilation:
Eliminating and gives the displacement-ventilation interface height equation
The left side is strictly increasing from zero to infinity, so there is one interface height. It depends on opening geometry and plume entrainment, not on ; the resulting and throughflow do depend on .
For finite source volume , conservation instead gives . The two pressure drops are no longer equal:
Let be a physically entraining source plume: and for . Its interface balance is . Therefore, as reaches zero, a positive-depth lower layer has no replenishment and cannot remain steady: this is no steady displacement layer without ambient supply. The limiting interface is . At the threshold and , and the entire hydrostatic head drives the roof discharge. Hence
This is source-volume blocking of displacement ventilation. The half-head factor of the negligible-source state must not be kept after the floor inflow vanishes. In the usual physical-area convention , the equivalent formula is .
The quoted pure-plume law cannot be used unmodified down to the origin for a source with nonzero volume: it would incorrectly give zero flux there. A compatible finite-source example uses a virtual origin,
It recovers the supplied pure-plume limit when , and gives the same blocking threshold. The complete finite- interface trajectory depends on that plume model, but the threshold needs only source-volume conservation and positive entrainment. For , the assumed steady regime with a lower inflow no longer exists.
Take for the repulsive molecular interaction, as the common reference pressure, and let be the ice-film temperature. All ratios involving use its absolute value, approximately , rather than the numerical Celsius value zero. The premelting film permits water to reach and freeze at the bottom of the ice while the upper surface is displaced upward without freezing there.
For equal phase mass densities, equality of the solid and liquid chemical potentials gives the Clapeyron pressure relation for equal-density phases. Indeed, and , so expansion around coexistence at yields
This is a pressure difference between phases, not a same-pressure Clausius-Clapeyron slope. The molecular disjoining pressure supports this difference:
Treat the normal solid load as its effective pressure in this planar model. The gravitational load corresponding to hydrostatic pressure is , so . Refer the bath pressure to the sheet's upper gravitational datum, or neglect the sheet-scale hydrostatic head. The Darcy flow law then gives the upward supply and the ice growth rate
Here is permeability of a porous medium, is dynamic viscosity, and equal densities identify supplied liquid volume with added ice volume to leading order in .
To recover the printed law, use the usual hydraulic control of frost heave idealization: the sheet's top is at , the liquid film and ice have a common thermal conductivity , and the flow is slow enough that latent-heat production is small compared with the conductive heat passing through the layer. In addition to a quasi-steady ice temperature field, this needs
The leading heat flux is consequently continuous through the film and ice. Their thermal resistances give
Let , a pressure scale. The thermomolecular pressure and the molecular law then give
Substitute this pressure into the Darcy flow law:
The first term draws water toward the undercooled ice; the increasing gravitational load eventually cancels it.
Quasi-steady temperature alone is not sufficient to fix this exact prefactor. With film conductivity , ice conductivity , and nonnegligible latent heat, the appropriate additional balance is
Together with the Darcy equation, this is the implicit growth model. Even in the slow-flow limit, a conductivity ratio changes the leading driving pressure by . Taking is a counterexample to obtaining the printed prefactor from quasi-steadiness alone. Thus the boxed equation is the intended equal-conductivity, thin-film, hydraulically limited model, rather than a consequence of only the stated quasi-steady assumption. This distinction is the heat-balance correction to a premelted-film growth model.
For that reduced equation define
The scale balances against ; has units of pressure times length to the power , so is a length and is a time. They yield
Set . The equation becomes linear:
For initial thickness , the explicit solution of gravity-limited frost heave is
The usual zero-initial-thickness sketch uses
Its early and late behaviour are
For , the derivative is positive and , so the curve is increasing and concave downward. It approaches the stable thickness exponentially. Initial thickness above instead relaxes downward; at it is stationary.
Figure 1.
Exact reduced premelting growth from zero thickness with the early power law and late exponential approach to equilibrium
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The singular slope at zero belongs to the formal reduced solution. Since , the thin-film assumption eventually fails as . The early power law therefore describes an intermediate continuum regime after any microscopic startup, not arbitrarily early physical times. A finite positive supplies a regular initial condition when that regime begins. Gravity limits the ultimate thickness; molecular suction and the Darcy resistance set the growth toward it.
Apply mass conservation to a fixed horizontal region . The layer mass is and the outward horizontal flux is . The divergence theorem and arbitrary choice of give
This depth-integrated law retains free-surface motion; neglecting the vertical velocity in horizontal momentum is not the assumption that the depth cannot change.
Take the free-surface pressure to be constant. hydrostatic pressure gives , so the horizontal pressure forces are . Linearization about a resting layer gives the linearized shallow water equations
Taking the curl of the momentum equations yields . Combining with continuity gives the linearized shallow-water potential-vorticity anomaly
For , . Taking the divergence of momentum gives . Eliminate the divergence with continuity to obtain
For , substitution of gives the inertia-gravity wave dispersion relation
The associated purely oscillatory velocity field is
These formulas satisfy all three linearized equations and the zero-anomaly condition. A separately added spatially uniform inertial oscillation is not part of this monochromatic wave.
To first order in amplitude evaluate the wave at a particle's equilibrium coordinate , so . Integrating its velocity gives displacements relative to the orbit centre
These are particle ellipses for rotating shallow-water waves, with axis ratio . For the stipulated positive signs, the velocity at phases points respectively right, up, left, down, with magnitudes . The particle orbits are clockwise as time advances, since the phase decreases.
Figure 1.
Horizontal velocity directions and particle ellipse for a rotating shallow-water wave
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Take positive upwards and let denote axial body force per unit volume. With inertia and surface tension omitted, the extensional equations for a slender Newtonian column are
Mass conservation gives the first equation. The second uses the Trouton ratio three: the leading radial velocity is , the radial normal traction gives , and the axial stress is . An axial control volume balance then gives the displayed equation. The approximation requires a slender column and slowly varying radius.
Let . Since the container base is closed, the total volume flux at every section is zero. The column carries flux , so the annulus carries and has mean speed of order . Its interfacial shear stress is therefore of order . Transmitting this stress through the core produces an axial velocity variation of order . The plug-flow criterion for a column in a low-viscosity annulus is consequently
Use modified pressure , removing the annular fluid's hydrostatic pressure. In a local planar gap, with at the column and at the container wall, lubrication theory gives
The required return flux per unit circumference is to leading order in . Its pressure-driven component is larger than the Couette component by , so the annular return flow around a slumping column gives
The annular shear contribution to the integrated axial force is smaller than this pressure-gradient term by . Retaining the leading terms and substituting gives the dimensional equations
The boundary conditions are at the base and at the free upper end; the latter expresses zero excess axial extensional stress.
For and initially constant , put . Then , so
For , define
This function records the leading thin-annulus resistance; differences from curvature and the Couette term enter at the already neglected relative order . Choose the extensional screening length of a slumping column and the associated scales as
Here denotes the initial annular gap in this question. With , and , the dimensional equations reduce to
Initially and , so , with and . The initial velocity profile of an annularly confined column is
The column thickens everywhere below its stress-free top, while that initial thickening rate is zero at the top.
For a tall column, , the limiting forms away from exponentially small end corrections are
The bulk falls at approximately , where excess weight balances annular hydraulic resistance. Extensional stresses adjust this velocity to zero in a basal boundary layer of thickness ; almost all thickening occurs there.
For a short column on this scale, , while still slender, the limits are
The annular-resistance term is small, so excess weight is balanced predominantly by extensional viscous stress. The top speed is , recovering the zero-annular-viscosity result. Thus is the vertical distance over which extensional stress communicates the basal constraint before annular resistance screens it. The sketches below use separate natural normalizations for the two limits.
Figure 1.
Initial velocity and thickening profiles of long and short annularly confined viscous columns
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At leading order in the lubrication approximation, surface arclength is horizontal distance. An insoluble surfactant is transported by the surface velocity, without bulk exchange or diffusion. Conservation of insoluble surfactant on a moving interface therefore becomes
The local hydrostatic pressure and capillary normal stress give
Solve with no-slip boundary condition at and Marangoni stress . The velocity, surface velocity and volume flux per unit width are
Mass conservation, , yields the thin-film equations with insoluble surfactant:
and the corresponding surfactant equation is
The hydrostatic and capillary terms thus affect both the film flux and the surface transport, with different coefficients.
For finite-mass Marangoni spreading on a liquid film, first neglect both pressure-gradient terms. If the spread has size , then and , giving surface speed . Equating to this speed gives
Set exactly as a similarity scale, and write
On the positive half of the pool, substitution produces two ordinary differential equations:
Symmetry fixes the flux integration constant in the second equation to zero, giving wherever . Substitution into the first equation gives . Thus the linear similarity profiles for surfactant spreading have the form
The concentration vanishes at the moving front. The two integral constraints are total surfactant mass and conservation of the fluid volume relative to the undisturbed layer:
The first gives ; the second gives . Therefore . In physical variables, the solution is
Outside the pool the leading outer solution has , . In particular, : the subscript means the one-sided limit just behind the front. As a consistency check, the surface speed there is and the fluid jump satisfies the moving-front mass conservation condition. This ideal outer solution has a height jump from to .
That jump cannot persist in a physical interface with nonzero gravity or surface tension. Across a smoothing region of width , changes by . The Marangoni flux scales as . At , its balance with the capillary flux gives capillary smoothing of a Marangoni front:
Here the surface tension approaches at the surfactant-free edge. The assumed concentration-gradient scale is even inside the smoothing region.
When gravity dominates capillarity, the hydrostatic flux is . The same balance gives gravity smoothing of a Marangoni front:
The gravity-dominated condition is , the square of the capillary length. The printed condition omits ; the expression above restores dimensional consistency.
This width grows faster than . It becomes comparable with the pool size when
The time is a scaling estimate, so numerical factors cannot be fixed by the width balance. For , the sharp-front similarity profile no longer describes the film: hydrostatic pressure levels the layer over the whole pool, and its thickness tends towards with an increasingly small depression beneath the surfactant. The surface can still spread by Marangoni stress while a hydrostatic-pressure-driven return flow nearly cancels the net film flux. In this gravity-levelled surfactant film, gives , so the fractional height variation is of order .
Use pressure with the ambient hydrostatic pressure removed, and let be the pressure below the falling sphere minus that above it. Away from the sphere the tube flow is Hagen-Poiseuille flow. The upper and lower clear lengths add to to leading order in , so their pressure drops add:
The large exterior reservoir returns this flux with negligible pressure loss compared with the long narrow tube. The sphere is assumed far enough from the ends that entrance effects and its occupied length give only lower-order corrections.
Now use a frame translating downwards with the sphere, and take positive upwards from its center. The sphere is stationary and the tube wall moves upwards with speed . The narrow gap is
It has axial length scale , making lubrication theory appropriate. The sphere-frame flux in a tube is constant: the upward relative flux through the whole section is , so its flux per unit circumference is
With on the sphere and on the wall, Couette-Poiseuille flow in a thin gap gives
Since , the pressure-jump relation is
The parabolic inner gap can be extended to infinite because these integrals are dominated by . The lubrication resistance integrals for a nearly occluding sphere are
Setting evaluates , , , hence
For the force, enclose the fluid between sections just above and below the sphere, including the annular layer. The net upward pressure force is . The tube wall exerts upward shear traction on this fluid; the sphere exerts a downward force equal to the upward hydrodynamic force on itself. From the gap solution,
The axial control volume force balance therefore gives the control-volume drag formula for a sphere in a tube:
Using a control volume avoids having to integrate the curved-sphere normal pressure and tangential shear separately.
With , , , , and , the three flux/pressure equations become
Solving these linear relations gives
The force relation is . Substitution first yields
Because and , the terms and are lower order than . Keeping the uniformly relevant leading terms gives
The squared is essential; replacing it by would give the wrong sign and scaling. This establishes the three drag regimes for a nearly occluding sphere.
For ,
The sphere nearly carries the tube's fluid down with it: the far-field flux is close to the piston displacement rate. The relative annular leakage is small in total volume, and the dominant force comes from the local annular shear term. The pressure force associated with the overall tube resistance is smaller.
For ,
The flow remains approximately piston-like, but the dominant force is now the pressure needed to drive Hagen-Poiseuille flow through the long clear tube. Both displayed terms in are retained because their relative size changes inside this regime without producing an additional leading drag regime.
For ,
The large tube resistance makes its net through-flow negligible. The sphere's displaced fluid instead passes upwards relative to it through the thin annular gap, with gap velocity of order . Its pressure drop and resulting pressure force dominate.
Finally consider two identical co-moving spheres, with nonoverlapping lubrication regions and the same total clear-tube length to leading order. The common through-flux is not doubled. In the middle regime it is still approximately , so the same total tube pressure drop is shared equally between the two identical spheres. The load sharing between co-moving spheres in a tube gives half the single-sphere force on each sphere in regime (ii). In regime (i), drag is set locally by the nearly pressure-balanced annular shear and is unchanged on each sphere. In regime (iii), each sphere must pass essentially its own displacement flux through its annular gap, giving the same local pressure drag as before; adding another pressure jump changes the already small tube flux but not either leading drag. The force is unchanged in regimes (i) and (iii).
The Boussinesq approximation requires . The reference mass density can then be used in inertia, while the small density excess is retained in buoyancy. Dilute particle volume fraction alone does not suffice if is exceptionally large. Define , so the reduced gravity is .
The shallow water equations require depth small compared with the horizontal evolution scale, weak vertical acceleration and approximately hydrostatic pressure. Here the ambient is deep and quiescent, so its leading contribution is a hydrostatic reference pressure; the excess pressure in the layer is . The model also needs nearly uniform streamwise velocity across the section and the stated absence of secondary circulation. The advancing gravity current nose is a separate region where these assumptions can fail.
A nearly uniform particle volume fraction can be maintained by turbulent mixing with eddy diffusivity , provided and the mixing time is short compared with horizontal advection and bulk evolution. Equivalently, keeps the bulk settling-induced gradient small. The particles should respond rapidly enough to follow the mixing motions. A thin boundary layer adjacent to the absorbing bed or walls need not be well mixed.
Uniform bulk concentration does not imply zero sedimentation. The relative downward particle velocity still supplies a particle deposition flux of approximately to an absorbing boundary. Mixing redistributes the remaining particles and maintains the bulk concentration profile while its overall level decreases; it need not suspend every particle indefinitely. Deposition requires negligible resuspension in the model.
The channel is prismatic: its width depends on height, not on . A layer of depth has cross-sectional area . Volume conservation gives . With , the integrated excess hydrostatic pressure force is
Thus the streamwise momentum balance is . Under the specified vertical-settling approximation, the horizontal projection of the depositional boundary has width , so the particle balance is , where is the downward speed magnitude. The prismatic triangular-channel shallow water equations are therefore
The pressure coefficient is the section-weighted mean of . The factor two in deposition comes from top width divided by area. There is no streamwise widening term, because is constant along the channel.
Define the positive characteristic speed scale . In variables the equations become
The coefficient matrix of this hyperbolic system has eigenvalues . Hence the three characteristic families are
Along , the concentration equation is the ordinary differential equation . Along , the left eigenvectors give the sedimenting triangular-channel characteristic compatibility equations
Here every derivative in a given equation follows that characteristic family, and . These three compatibility equations form the characteristic description; they are not three independent closed equations for all fields on any one curve. In particular, are not conserved Riemann invariants when the concentration varies: its differential and the deposition source must both be retained. The description assumes ; the dry or zero-buoyancy limit is degenerate.
Choose at the contact line, with pointing into the mountains and the plate moving in the positive direction at speed . Let be the plate. For viscous mountain spreading over an underthrust plate, the lubrication approximation assumes slow horizontal variation, hydrostatic pressure , and . Impose no slip at the plate and zero tangential traction at the free surface. Without sediment,
The horizontal mass flux is . For a steady mountain range with no mountain material entering across its contact line, . Therefore , and the vanishing height at the bare contact gives the mountain profile
The large slope extremely close to is an inner region where the lubrication approximation ceases to be quantitatively valid.
Now let sediment occupy and mountains , with the mountain-material thickness and . Equal densities make the same in both layers. Continuity of velocity and shear stress at , no slip at and zero shear at give the shear stress throughout. Thus the two velocity profiles are
Their volume fluxes are
Multiplying by gives the separate mass fluxes. The coupled conservation of mass equations are
This is the sediment-lubricated viscous mountain model. It includes shear-driven transport by the plate and pressure-driven gravitational spreading.
In steady state the mountain-material flux is zero, while the upstream uniform sediment layer has . For this gives
Eliminating proves the algebraic thickness relation:
At the contact , the last coefficient must vanish. The nonzero physical solution is consequently
The condition comes from the limiting zero flux per unit mountain thickness, not merely the automatic vanishing of at . The surface slope anywhere under the mountains is
Lower sediment viscosity flattens the near-contact surface, while its contact height remains . Far inside, where , the mountains recover the bare-layer slope scaling. The formulas determine the mountain profile by the algebraic relation plus this first-order equation. For example, put and ; the physical root satisfies , taking for . This selects the branch smoothly connected to the contact.
In front of the contact, , there is only sediment, so and
Define and . Integrating from the contact yields the upstream basin profile of a sediment-lubricated mountain:
Equivalently, on . The inverse is uniquely defined because ; an elementary explicit inverse is unnecessary. This profile tends to as , approaches at the contact and has the same surface slope there as the mountain branch. Its far-field excess decays exponentially on length scale , which increases as the sediment viscosity decreases.
In the surfactant transport with exchange relaxation, is the material derivative following an interfacial material element. The term accounts for dilution by tangential stretching, while accounts for changing area through normal motion and curvature. The surface diffusion term redistributes surfactant down concentration gradients. The exchange term relaxes its concentration towards , through adsorption or desorption from a surrounding reservoir, on time scale .
In the bubble frame the spherical interface is stationary and impermeable. A steady material derivative is . For a linear response in the rising speed this and are second order, whereas stretching of is first order. Thus
Rotational symmetry, linear response to , and zero normal velocity allow only , where is the surface tangent projector. This is the dipolar, axisymmetric sector; axisymmetry alone, without the linear-response assumption, would allow other angular dependence.
On a sphere and . Applying the surface tangent projector to the derivative gives the sphere surface derivative identities
For example, taking a second surface divergence of the first identity yields the third. Equivalently, the components of are degree-one spherical harmonics. Hence a dipolar surfactant distribution solves the linear equation:
The required smallness condition is . Surface diffusion or exchange must smooth the concentration faster than it is redistributed by the actual interfacial velocity. We require , and ; with neither process there is no such steady linear balance at nonzero . A small capillary number also justifies the spherical approximation.
Take the normal from the inner bubble to the outer liquid, define , and set . The interfacial stress balance with variable surface tension is
Because and , its tangential part becomes
This is a Marangoni stress: surface-tension gradients oppose the clean-bubble circulation.
Use the Unscaled Papkovich–Neuber representation, and . The constant vector potential gives . In the decaying, linear axisymmetric sector, a vector monopole and scalar dipole provide the two constants needed at the sphere; other equivalent potential choices amount to a representation freedom. The PDF potential contains the factor omitted in the TeX aid. With that factor restored, the exterior velocity is
At the interface, no penetration gives , and the tangential velocity gives . Using the traction coefficient printed in equation (3), the tangential stress condition gives . The requested algebraic answers are therefore
There is a factor-of-two error in the PDF traction. Direct differentiation of the preceding velocity with the Newtonian fluid stress tensor gives
rather than its printed coefficient . In particular the tangential traction is . Keeping the same definition of , the physically consistent translating surfactant-coated bubble instead has and
The two sets must not be silently conflated. As a useful check, the no-slip limit has the usual total Stokes flow drag with the corrected traction; the printed traction would double it.
Both versions give , , when : the interface is tangentially stress-free and circulates as a clean inviscid bubble. For , , , : the interface is immobile in the bubble frame and behaves as a no-slip sphere. The Marangoni stress remains finite because has a nonzero limit. The concentration smallness condition still has to hold; large is not by itself a complete linearization criterion.
The normal component is balanced by the inner gas pressure and the normal capillary stress , including the variation of , together with the hydrostatic pressure difference responsible for buoyancy. A spatially uniform inner pressure alone cannot balance the dipolar traction. To make the normal stress balance on a translating bubble explicit, let be the outer-minus-inner mass density. After removing the equilibrium Laplace pressure, the corrected outer normal traction has dynamic part . Its degree-one balance is
Thus, if a terminal speed is desired, , interpolating between the clean-bubble and rigid-sphere speeds. A degree-one shape displacement is merely a translation of the sphere, so the balance determines its rise speed, rather than a dipolar shape distortion.
For an infinite blade, the steady moving-frame flux is constant and its upstream value is . The infinite-blade gravity pile therefore satisfies , or . Integrating gives
An additive constant in simply shifts . The head at the blade, and hence , must supply the pressure difference that makes the flux beneath the blade equal to the incoming flux. For the deep part has , followed by a smooth transition to with exponentially small, proportional to . Thus is an approximate nose coordinate, not a sharp front of the exact solution.
Near the rounded edge the parabolic lubrication gap is . In the blade frame the floor moves at and the blade is stationary. The Couette-Poiseuille flow in a thin gap has flux . Let be positive leakage towards the rear, and let . The narrow-gap integrals are
Integrating the pressure gradient gives , so the squeegee gap leakage flux is
The first term is the floor-driven contribution. For the steady infinite blade, , so . The hydrostatic pressure difference is the height difference at the two sides. A fully developed rear layer of thickness has moving-frame flux ; hence , and
The large head eventually forces all the arriving film beneath an infinite blade. Taking a perfectly closed gap instead would eliminate this steady state.
Figure 1.
Infinite-blade height profile and schematic finite-blade pile with sideways drainage
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Write , , and choose the common undisturbed interface pressure . The hydrostatic pressure is in the upper fluid and in the lower fluid. Continuity of hydrostatic pressure across both current interfaces gives
Thus and . This isostatic depth partition of an interfacial current expresses local vertical buoyancy balance: a displaced column with an imbalance would move vertically until the partition was restored. With the hydrostatic pressure subtracted, the pressure within the current is , where
The equivalent body force is outward for a profile decreasing with . Its magnitude is ; the derivative without an absolute value is a signed quantity.
For an ambient-controlled interfacial plug current, integrating the body force through depth gives radial force per area . The ambient Stokes flow varies over distance , exerting traction , so . The current's internal shear supports the ambient traction with a velocity difference ; requires . The force per area from its in-plane viscous extension is , negligible against ambient traction when . Together these give the viscosity window for an interfacial plug current
Fixed volume gives , and the spreading velocity has the scale . Thus and
Choosing so that exactly, the similarity solution has , , and . In radial conservation , substitution gives . Regularity and no source at the centre remove the integration constant. Therefore the radial plug velocity is linear:
For the disc-traction analogy for an interfacial current, subtract the imposed straining flow from the stationary-disc solution. The perturbation has velocity on the disc and zero far-field velocity. Reverse its sign: the resulting Stokes flow is driven by a radially expanding disc with velocity in otherwise quiescent fluid. The background straining flow contributes no radial shear traction on , so the given disc traction changes sign. This step uses Linearity of Stokes flow, Uniqueness of Stokes flow, and the no-slip boundary condition. The thin plug current has the same leading boundary velocity and hence the same ambient resistance. Each face contributes ; both faces must be counted. With , radial force balance is
Integrate with . The interfacial plug-current similarity profile is
Volume integration gives . Eliminating gives the full prefactor:
The formal edge slope diverges, so a narrow edge region lies outside the thin-current approximation. Its traction and volume contributions are integrable, and this is a leading thin-current solution rather than a uniformly valid edge description.
For a diffusion-controlled solute gravity current, excess solute mass, not enriched-fluid volume, is conserved. At late times the effective mass density excess is proportional to solute concentration, so , and . The same ambient resistance scaling gives
This scaling does not determine a universal numerical prefactor. The mass diffusivity controls the growing depth, while dilution weakens buoyancy; assuming a fixed current volume would incorrectly retain the law. The thin-layer requirement becomes ; when only dissolved solute changes the upper fluid, its viscosity is of order the ambient viscosity, consistent with the plug-current window.