Dissipation estimate for high-Reynolds-number bubble drag Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For a clean bubble of size and speed at large Reynolds number, the outer potential flow violates the stress-free condition by a strain of order . A boundary layer of thickness needs a velocity correction only of order , so its dissipation is smaller than the outer-flow dissipation by order . The leading drag power is therefore obtained from
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 ib Paper 3 18G Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 ib Paper 1 17E Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 ii Paper 4 37E Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 ib Paper 1 17A Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 ib Paper 4 18B i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 72 1 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
Write for the vertical displacement of the sea ice, and take the undisturbed water surface as , with water occupying . The elastic plate has areal mass and bending stiffnessHere is Young's modulus and is Poisson's ratio. We neglect in-plane prestress, viscosity and plate shear deformation, and linearize about hydrostatic equilibrium. These are important assumptions: perfect elasticity alone does not specify every term in a floating-plate model.
For a plane wave , , potential flow in deep water has velocity potential . This solves Laplace's equation and decays downwards. The kinematic boundary condition gives . Linearizing the water pressure at the displaced interface gives an upward excess loadThe elastic plate equation is . Substitution and multiplication by therefore give the flexural-gravity wave dispersion relationEquivalently, with and ,This determines the positive wavenumber implicitly for prescribed positive angular frequency. It is unambiguous: the derivative of is , while runs from zero to infinity.
The phase velocity and group velocity areFor open-water deep-water gravity waves, , and hence and . At large period the ice-covered curves approach these straight lines. At shorter period, plate bending raises the speeds, so both ice-covered curves turn upward as period decreases. In the bending regime with negligible plate inertia, and ; in the formal plate-inertia-dominated limit, and . The latter extrapolation eventually leaves thin-plate validity and should not be read as a prediction at arbitrarily small wavelength.
The plotted parameters are illustrative rather than measured at the observation site. They give a group-velocity minimum of a flexural-gravity wave near at period . There is no arbitrarily slow wave-energy branch under a continuous elastic sheet. Energy put into a localized disturbance travels away at at least this minimum group velocity; a slowly moving wind system cannot retain a wave packet indefinitely beneath itself. This reduces the opportunity for sustained local growth compared with slow, short open-water waves, and the continuous cover also prevents direct wind forcing of an exposed water surface. Incoming long swell can still propagate.
A group-velocity minimum of a flexural-gravity wave is not by itself a universal minimum wind speed for wave generation. A steadily translating forcing pattern requires a phase velocity matching its translation speed, so the minimum of , not , supplies the corresponding resonance threshold. Random wind forcing, dissipation and aerodynamic coupling must be specified before making an absolute generation claim.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 78 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
Choose and as the speed and source strength in the same kinematic velocity convention. With and , superposition of uniform potential flow and a two-dimensional point source giveswhere . The angular branch cut records the volume flux from the source; the logarithm's arbitrary reference length only changes an additive constant in the velocity potential.
The stagnation point lies on the negative axis, where . Thus the limiting upstream reach of source fluid isThe stagnation point is approached asymptotically, rather than reached in finite time by a parcel on the upstream axis. The dividing streamlines through it have when the angle is taken in . Far downstream , so these streamlines approach . Consequently the source fluid occupies the Rankine half-body between them, with downstream width . In the upper half-plane its boundary can also be parametrized by , , .
For arrival at the downstream axis, the direct streamline , has speed . Its transit time from the ideal point source isThe first source fluid at a downstream cross-section lies on this symmetry axis: for positive , the horizontal source contribution is maximal at , and off-axis paths cannot advance through positive more quickly. A far-away parcel passing the inlet line at the same release time has transit time . The time advance is thereforeThis is an advance, not the source parcel's absolute transit time. If a source parcel is released at time while the distant comparison parcel crosses at time zero, the advance relative to that parcel is ; the printed formula uses simultaneous releases. If instead denote Darcy velocity and bulk-area source flux in a medium of uniform porosity , their ratio still gives the same , but both parcel times acquire a factor . No porosity is specified here, so the displayed time formula fixes the kinematic convention.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 314 4 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The separation of the two bodies is , as is fixed by the supplied Kepler third law . The phrase “orbit of radius ” cannot denote the first body's distance from the center of mass in that formula.
Expand the companion's Newtonian potential of a point mass about the first body's center. The constant term produces no force; the linear term produces the uniform acceleration of the center and disappears in the translating frame. The leading differential acceleration therefore comes from the quadrupolar tidal forcingwhere points toward the companion. It is a degree-two solid spherical harmonic. For a circular nonrotating-frame orbit, its time-dependent components have and frequency , because the squared direction cosines repeat twice per orbit. There is also a static component. The real part of one complex harmonic represents the pair of time-dependent components; its normalization and orientation are absorbed into the order-one coefficient . This gives and . The expansion is the leading term for small; spin is being neglected.
For a forced potential flow with the same temporal frequency, the Euler momentum equation becomesUse . The surface gravity perturbation of a uniform-density sphere is unchanged, as is the vanishing Lagrangian pressure perturbation boundary condition. Integrating the equation and applying that condition givesSince , the real surface displacement isIndeed , so the normalization is consistent. This is a particular forced response away from the resonance; arbitrary free normal modes can be added.
Put and . The tidal resonance of a stellar oscillation condition is , henceThe resonance gives for finite nonnegative , with actual forcing requiring . At exact resonance the undamped linearization has no bounded response at the forcing frequency: the time-domain particular solution grows proportionally to times a sinusoid. Thus the frequency-response formula has a pole, rather than describing a finite resonant displacement. Away from that pole, linearization requires the displayed surface displacement to be small compared with ; the leading quadrupolar tidal forcing approximation separately requires small.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ii Paper 3 38B b i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
Conservation of volume flux through a circular arc of radius givesso the outer flow is the sink flow in a sectorThis is a potential flow and already satisfies the no-penetration boundary condition on the radial walls. It has nonzero tangential speed there, however, and therefore violates the no-slip boundary condition. Thin vorticity-bearing boundary layers are needed to reduce that speed to zero at each wall.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 ii Paper 2 39C c iii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
A rigid body obeys the no-slip boundary condition. Its outer potential flow generally has an tangential slip velocity at the surface, so the boundary layer must make an velocity correction across thickness . Its strain is therefore , and in two dimensions its dissipation per unit axial length iswhich exceeds the outer dissipation by .
The dominant drag consequently depends on the detailed boundary-layer velocity field and possibly on boundary-layer separation. It cannot be obtained by integrating the outer irrotational strain alone.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 ib Paper 4 16D Solution Created 2026-09-23 Updated 2026-09-25
In the fluid region , incompressibility and potential flow giveNo penetration through the exact surface gives
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 ii Paper 1 40A a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Potential dipole 2026-10-06
A potential dipole in three dimensions is the potential flow with . Away from the origin its potential is a harmonic function, so it is also a constant-pressure Stokes flow. Its velocity decays as and its vorticity is zero. It is distinct from a stresslet, whose leading velocity decays as .
