Admixture and Drift in Oscillating Fluid Flows

Abstract

The motions of a passive scalar $\hat{a}$ in a general high-frequency oscillating flow are studied. Our aim is threefold: (i) to obtain different classes of general solutions; (ii) to identify, classify, and develop related asymptotic procedures; and (iii) to study the notion of drift motion and the limits of its applicability. The used mathematical approach combines a version of the two-timing method, the Eulerian averaging procedure, and several novel elements. Our main results are: (i) the scaling procedure produces two independent dimensionless scaling parameters: inverse frequency $1/\omega$ and displacement amplitude $\delta$; (ii) we propose the \emph{inspection procedure} that allows to find the natural functional forms of asymptotic solutions for $1/\omega\to 0, \delta\to 0$ and leads to the key notions of \emph{critical, subcritical, and supercritical asymptotic families} of solutions; (iii) we solve the asymptotic problems for an arbitrary given oscillating flow and any initial data for $\hat{a}$; (iv) these solutions show that there are at least three different drift velocities which correspond to different asymptotic paths on the plane $(1/\omega,\delta)$; each velocity has dimensionless magnitude ${O}(1)$; (v) the obtained solutions also show that the averaged motion of a scalar represents a pure drift for the zeroth and first approximations and a drift combined with \emph{pseudo-diffusion} for the second approximation; (vi) we have shown how the changing of a time-scale produces new classes of solutions; (vii) we develop the two-timing theories of a drift based on both the \emph{GLM}-theory and the dynamical systems approach; (viii) examples illustrating different options of drifts and pseudo-diffusion are presented.