BIFURCATIONS OF INCOMPRESSIBLE-FLOW THROUGH PLANE SYMMETRICAL CHANNELEXPANSIONS

Computational investigations have been performed into the behaviour of an incompressible Newtonian fluid downstream of a plane symmetric cha nnel expansion in order to determine the critical value of the Reynold s number, above which the flow becomes asymmetric with respect to the channel geometry. Two systems have been studied, namely, one in which the channel walls downstream of the expansion are modelled by the no-s lip conditions and one in which cyclic boundary conditions are specifi ed. The two cases are referred to in the present work as the channel a nd the cascade models, respectively. In both cases, channel systems co ntaining one, two and three parallel channels which merge via plane, s ymmetric expansions have been investigated and, where possible, the re sults have been compared with the experimental and numerical data obta ined by previous investigators. (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.