Experimental data of thermal cracking of soybean oil and blends with hydrogenated fat.

This article presents the experimental data on the thermal cracking of soybean oil and blends with hydrogenated fat. Thermal cracking experiments were carried out in a plug flow reactor with pure soybean oil and two blends with hydrogenated fat to reduce the degree of unsaturation of the feedstock. The same operational conditions was considered. The data obtained showed a total aromatics content reduction by 14% with the lowest degree of unsaturation feedstock. Other physicochemical data is presented, such as iodine index, acid index, density, kinematic viscosity. A distillation curve was carried out and compared with the curve from a petroleum sample.

Near-field acoustic streaming jet.

A numerical and experimental investigation of the acoustic streaming flow in the near field of a circular plane ultrasonic transducer in water is performed. The experimental domain is a parallelepipedic cavity delimited by absorbing walls to avoid acoustic reflection, with a top free surface. The flow velocities are measured by particle image velocimetry, leading to well-resolved velocity profiles. The theoretical model is based on a linear acoustic propagation model, which correctly reproduces the acoustic field mapped experimentally using a hydrophone, and an acoustic force term introduced in the Navier-Stokes equations under the plane-wave assumption. Despite the complexity of the acoustic field in the near field, in particular in the vicinity of the acoustic source, a good agreement between the experimental measurements and the numerical results for the velocity field is obtained, validating our numerical approach and justifying the planar wave assumption in conditions where it is a priori far from obvious. The flow structure is found to be correlated with the acoustic field shape. Indeed, the longitudinal profiles of the velocity present a wavering linked to the variations in acoustic intensity along the beam axis and transverse profiles exhibit a complex shape strongly influenced by the transverse variations of the acoustic intensity in the beam. Finally, the velocity in the jet is found to increase as the square root of the acoustic force times the distance from the origin of the jet over a major part of the cavity, after a strong short initial increase, where the velocity scales with the square of the distance from the upstream wall.

Stability of a flow down an incline with respect to two-dimensional and three-dimensional disturbances for Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids.

Squire's theorem, which states that the two-dimensional instabilities are more dangerous than the three-dimensional instabilities, is revisited here for a flow down an incline, making use of numerical stability analysis and Squire relationships when available. For flows down inclined planes, one of these Squire relationships involves the slopes of the inclines. This means that the Reynolds number associated with a two-dimensional wave can be shown to be smaller than that for an oblique wave, but this oblique wave being obtained for a larger slope. Physically speaking, this prevents the possibility to directly compare the thresholds at a given slope. The goal of the paper is then to reach a conclusion about the predominance or not of two-dimensional instabilities at a given slope, which is of practical interest for industrial or environmental applications. For a Newtonian fluid, it is shown that, for a given slope, oblique wave instabilities are never the dominant instabilities. Both the Squire relationships and the particular variations of the two-dimensional wave critical curve with regard to the inclination angle are involved in the proof of this result. For a generalized Newtonian fluid, a similar result can only be obtained for a reduced stability problem where some term connected to the perturbation of viscosity is neglected. For the general stability problem, however, no Squire relationships can be derived and the numerical stability results show that the thresholds for oblique waves can be smaller than the thresholds for two-dimensional waves at a given slope, particularly for large obliquity angles and strong shear-thinning behaviors. The conclusion is then completely different in that case: the dominant instability for a generalized Newtonian fluid flowing down an inclined plane with a given slope can be three dimensional.

Stability of two-layer shear-thinning film flows.

The stability of a two-layer film flow of non-Newtonian fluids is studied with a linear temporal approach. Shear-thinning fluids are considered, which follow the four-parameter inelastic Carreau model. A modified Orr-Sommerfeld equation system is obtained, which is solved by using a spectral Tau collocation method based on Chebyshev polynomials. The effects of density and viscosity stratification are considered, as well as the influence of the shear-thinning properties of the fluid. It is found that, when the viscosity is stronger in the upper layer, the base flow and the stability properties are almost not influenced by the change of the shear-thinning properties in this upper layer. In the other situations, the shear-thinning properties have an influence on the different instabilities, the long-wave surface instability and the short- and long-wave interface instabilities.

Instabilities in the Rayleigh-Bénard-Eckart problem.

This study is a linear stability analysis of the flows induced by ultrasound acoustic waves (Eckart streaming) within an infinite horizontal fluid layer heated from below. We first investigate the dependence of the instability threshold on the normalized acoustic beam width H(b) for an isothermal fluid layer. The critical curve, given by the critical values of the acoustic streaming parameter, A(c), has a minimum for a beam width H(b) ≈ 0.32. This curve, which corresponds to the onset of oscillatory instabilities, compares well with that obtained for a two-dimensional cavity of large aspect ratio [A(x) = (length/height) = 10]. For a fluid layer heated from below subject to acoustic waves (the Rayleigh-Bénard-Eckart problem), the influence of the acoustic streaming parameter A on the stability threshold is investigated for various values of the beam width H(b) and different Prandtl numbers Pr. It is shown that, for not too small values of the Prandtl number (Pr > Pr(l)), the acoustic streaming delays the appearance of the instabilities in some range of the acoustic streaming parameter A. The critical curves display two behaviors. For small or moderate values of A, the critical Rayleigh number Ra(c) increases with A up to a maximum. Then, when A is further increased, Ra(c) undergoes a decrease and eventually goes to 0 at A = A(c), i.e., at the critical value of the isothermal case. Large beam widths and large Prandtl numbers give a better stabilizing effect. In contrast, for Prandtl numbers below the limiting value Pr(l) (which depends on H(b)), stabilization cannot be obtained. The instabilities in the Rayleigh-Bénard-Eckart problem are oscillatory and correspond to right- or left-traveling waves, depending on the parameter values. Finally, energy analyses of the instabilities at threshold have indicated that the change of the thresholds can be connected to the modifications induced by the streaming flow on the critical perturbations.