Non-modal elastic instability and elastic waves in weakly perturbed channel flow

Abstract: In this paper, we present experimental results and reveal that strong perturbations are not necessary for elastic instability to occur in straight-channel, inertialess, visco-elastic flows at high elasticity. We show that a non-normal mode bifurcation is followed by chaotic fluctuations, self-organized as stream-wise streaks, and elastic waves due to weak disturbances generated by a small cavity at the center of the top channel wall. The chaotic flow persists in the transition, elastic turbulence, and drag reduction regimes, in agreement with previous observations for the case of strong perturbations at the inlet. Furthermore, the elastic waves we observe propagate in the span-wise direction, which allows to confirm the elastic waves linear dispersion relation directly for the first time. In addition, the span-wise propagating elastic wave's velocity depends on $\mathrm{Wi}$ with the same scaling that was previously observed for stream-wise propagating waves, although their velocity magnitude is significantly smaller than what was previously observed for the stream-wise ones.