Subdiffusive and superdiffusive transport in plane steady viscous flows

Abstract

Deterministic transport of passive tracers in steady laminar plane flows of incompressible viscous fluids through lattices of solid bodies or arrays of steady vortices can be anomalous. Motion along regular patterns of streamlines is often aperiodic: Repeated slow passages near stagnation points and/or solid surfaces serve for eventual decorrelation. Singularities of passage times near the obstacles, dictated by the boundary conditions, affect the character of transport anomalies: Flows past arrays of vortices are subdiffusive whereas tracers advected through lattices of solid obstacles can feature superdiffusion. We calculate the transport characteristics with the help of the simple and computationally efficient model: the special flow.