Direct numerical simulation has been performed to explore the turbulence near a freely deformable interface in a countercurrent air–water flow, at a shear Reynolds number $\Re_{\star}=171$. The deformations of the interface fall in the range of capillary waves of waveslope $ak=0.01$, and very small phase speed-to-friction velocity ratio, $c/u_{\star}$. The results for the gas side are compared to open-channel flow data at the same shear Reynolds number, placing emphasis upon the influence of the waves in the interfacial viscosity-affected region, and away from it in the outer core flow. Comparison shows a similarity in the distribution of the turbulence intensities near the interface, confirming that for the range of flow conditions considered, the lighter phase perceives the interface like a flexible solid surface, at least in the limit of non-breaking waves. Overall, in a time-averaged sense, the interfacial motion affects the turbulence in the near-interface region; the most pertinent effect is a general dampening of the turbulent fluctuating field which, in turn, leads to a reduction in the interfacial dissipation. Furthermore, the turbulence is found to be less anisotropic at the interface than at the wall. This is confirmed by the analysis of the pressure–rate-of-strain tensor, where the effect of interfacial motion is shown to decrease the pressure strain correlation in the direction normal to the interface and in the spanwise direction. The analysis of the turbulent kinetic energy and Reynolds stress budgets reveals that the interface deformations mainly affect the so-called boundary term involving the redistribution of energy, i.e. by the action of pressure, turbulent fluctuations and molecular viscosity, and the dissipation terms, leaving the production terms almost unchanged. The non-zero value of the turbulent kinetic energy at the interface, together with the reduced dissipation, implies that the turbulent activity persists near the interface and contributes to accelerating the turbulent transfer mechanisms. Away from the interface, the decomposition of the fluctuating velocity gradient tensor demonstrates that the fluctuating rate-of-strain and rate-of-rotation at the interface influence the flow throughout the boundary layer more vigorously. The study also reveals the streaky structure over the deformable interface to be less organized than over a rigid wall. However, the elongation of the streaks does not seem to be much affected by the interfacial motion. A simple qualitative analysis of the quasi–streamwise vortices using different eduction techniques shows that the interfacial turbulent structures do not change with a change of boundary conditions.

Turbulence structures near the interface between two flowing fluids have been resolved by direct numerical simulation. As a first step the interface has been kept flat, corresponding closely to the recent gas-liquid flow experiments of Rashidi and Banerjee [Phys. Fluids A 2, 1827 (1990)], with the fluids coupled through continuity of velocity and shear stress boundary conditions. For density ratios between the fluids typical of air and water, the turbulence characteristics on the gas side are quite similar to that in wall regions. The liquid side shows larger velocity fluctuations close to the interface and ejections originate closer to the interface. The mean velocity distribution, turbulence intensities, Reynolds stress and various other statistical measures are significantly altered compared to those in the wall region of channel flows. Quasi-streamwise vortices form in the areas between high and low shear stress on both sides of the interface. At any given instant, about a fifth of these appear to be coupled across the interface. Whether the others are, but the coupling is too weak for the detection technique used, or were coupled previously remains an open question. In any case, sweeps usually occur on the high shear stress side of these vortices and ejections on the low shear stress side. Significant coupling exists across the interface with over 60% of the Reynolds stress in the region close to the interface being associated with coupled events –the main coupling coming through gas ejection-liquid ejection events over low shear stress regions, with a lesser but significant number of gas sweep-liquid sweep events over high shear stress regions.

The Navier–Stokes equations have been solved, by a pseudospectral method, for pressure-driven flows between a no-slip wavy wall and a slip flat wall. Periodic boundary conditions were used in the streamwise and spanwise directions. The physical domain is mapped into a computational domain that is a rectangular parallelepiped using a nonorthogonal transformation. The pseudospectral solution procedure employed in previous studies, for example, Lam and Banerjee [Phys. Fluids A 4, 306 (1992)], eliminated the pressure and solved for the wall–normal velocity and vorticity. The other velocity components were calculated using the definition of vorticity, and the continuity equation. This procedure leads to oscillations in the pressure field when solutions were attempted in the mapped computational domain. To overcome the problem, the procedure had to be modified and the pressure solved for directly using a fractional time step technique. For the cases examined here, these modifications resulted in spectral accuracy being maintained. Flow over sinusoidal wave trains has been simulated and the results compare well with available experiments. The simulations show significant effects of the wavy boundary on the mean flow and the turbulence statistics. The mean velocity profile differs substantially from the profile for the flat-wall case, particularly in the buffer region where the fluid is under the influence of both the wavy wall and the slip boundary. The velocity fluctuations in the streamwise direction decrease in the buffer region. This effect becomes more pronounced when the wave amplitude increases. Most of the redistribution of energy, from the streamwise direction to the spanwise and wall–normal directions, occurs in a thin layer close to the boundary, downstream of the wave troughs. The energy primarily redistributes into spanwise fluctuations. High shear stress regions form downstream of the wave troughs, and streaky structures and quasi-streamwise vortices are also seen to initiate in these regions. The length of the streaks, and the extent of the quasi-streamwise vortices, scale with wave length for the two cases investigated.

We derive an asymptotic expansion as n → ∞ for a large range of coefficients of (f (z)) n , where f (z) is a power series satisfying |f (z)| < f (|z|) for z ∈ C, z ∉ R + . When f is a polynomial and the two smallest and the two largest exponents appearing in f are consecutive integers, we use the expansion to generalize results of Odlyzko and Richmond (1985) on log concavity of polynomials, and we prove that a power of f has only positive coefficients.2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 41A60, 26C99.

We study several notions of positivity for a class of real-valued functions of several variables that includes the Laurent polynomials. We show that Handelman's positivity condition is characterized by boundedness of the associated Legendre transformation, or boundedness of the entropy function, while another notion of positivity here introduced characterizes the mapping property of the Legendre transformation derived by Marcus and Tuncel for beta functions. Several examples are given to distinguish the various notions of positivity.