Transient dispersion in oscillatory flows: auxiliary-time extension method for concentration moments

The dispersion phenomenon of mass and heat transport in oscillatory flows has wide applications in environmental, physiological and microfluidic flows. The method of concentration moments is a powerful theoretical framework for analysing transport characteristics and is well developed for steady flows: general solution expressions of moments have been profoundly derived by Barton ( J. Fluid Mech. 126, 1983, 205–218). However, it was thought that these expressions could not be directly applied to unsteady flows. Prior studies needed to re-solve the governing equations of moments from scratch, encountering the complication induced by the time-periodic velocity, leaving higher-order statistics like skewness and kurtosis analytically intractable except for specific cases. This work proposes a novel approach based on a two-time-variable extension to tackle these challenges. By introducing an auxiliary time variable, referred to as oscillation time to characterise the inherent oscillation in the dispersion due to the oscillating flow, the transport problem is extended to a two-time-variable system with a ‘steady’ flow term. This enables the direct use of Barton’s expressions and thus avoids the prior complication. This approach not only offers an intuitive physical perspective for the influence of the velocity oscillation, but also clarifies the solution structure of concentration moments. As a preliminary verification, we examine the transport problem in an oscillatory Couette flow. The analytical solution agrees well with the numerical result by Brownian dynamics simulations. The effects of the point-source release and the phase shift of velocity on the transport characteristics are investigated. By extending the classic steady-flow solution to the time-dependent flows, this work provides a versatile framework for transient dispersion analysis, enhancing predictions in oscillatory transport problems.