Improved asymptotic predictions for the effective slip over a corrugated topography

Abstract

• Significantly improved asymptotic predictions on effective slip in comparison to literature. • Systematic study on convergence radii of asymptotic series. • Novel use of series improvement and acceleration techniques. • Novel use of spectral analysis and symbolic computation. Accurate analytical prediction of the effective slip boundary condition in shear-driven Stokes flows directed longitudinally and transversely to a one-dimensional sinusoidal no-slip topography is explored. First, the domain perturbation technique is extended through spectral analysis and symbolic computations to obtain polynomial approximations (Taylor polynomials) of arbitrary specifiable order for the effective slip length. However, when assessed for numerical accuracy against fully-resolved numerical simulations using the finite-element-method, higher order Taylor polynomials give progressively inferior predictions in comparison to lower-order ones, unless the product of amplitude and wave-number is restricted below unity. From Domb–Sykes plots, the reason for the poor accuracy of higher order Taylor polynomials is assessed to be the finite convergence radii, approximately equaling unity, of the asymptotic power series for both longitudinal and transverse flows. For either of the flows, application of Euler transformation to the expansion parameter provide polynomial-form approximations that are accurate for amplitude values exceeding the convergence radius. The slow convergence of the Euler-transformed series can be remedied through Shanks transformation, at the cost of losing the convenience of closed forms. Finally, Padé approximants are shown to provide even more accurate but still closed-form alternatives to polynomials that work accurately at amplitudes much exceeding the above-identified convergence radii.