Effect of Horizontal Quasi-Periodic Oscillation on the Interfacial Instability of Two Superimposed Viscous Fluid Layers in a Vertical Hele-Shaw Cell

Abstract

We investigate the effect of horizontal quasi-periodic oscillation on the stability of two superimposed immiscible fluid layers confined in a horizontal Hele-Shaw cell. To approximate real oscillations, a quasi-periodic oscillation with two incommensurate frequencies is considered. Thus, the linear stability analysis leads to a quasi-periodic oscillator, with damping, which describes the evolution of the amplitude of the interface. Two types of quasi-periodic instabilities occur: the low-wavenumber Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and the large-wavenumber resonances. We mainly show that, for equal amplitudes of the superimposed accelerations, and for a low irrational frequency ratio, there is competition between several resonance modes allowing a very large selection of the wavenumber from lower to higher values. This is a way to control the sizes of the waves. Furthermore, increasing the frequency ratio has a stabilizing effect for both types of instability whose thresholds are found to correspond to quasi-periodic solutions using the frequency spectrum. For a ratio of the two superimposed displacement amplitudes equal to unity and less than unity, the number of resonances and competition between their modes also become significant for the intermediate values of the ratio of frequencies. The effects of other physical and geometrical parameters, such as the damping coefficient, density ratio, and heights of the two fluid layers, are also examined.