Non linear stability analysis of parallel channels with natural circulation

Linear stability analysis of two-phase flow in natural circulation loop is quite extensively studied by many researchers in past few years. It can be noted that linear stability analysis is limited to the small perturbations only. It is pointed out that such systems typically undergo Hopf bifurcation. If the Hopf bifurcation is subcritical, then for relatively large perturbation, the system has unstable limit cycles in the (linearly) stable region in the parameter space. Hence, linear stability analysis capturing only infinitesimally small perturbations is not sufficient. In this paper, bifurcation analysis is carried out to capture the non-linear instability of the dynamical system and both subcritical and supercritical bifurcations are observed. The regions in the parameter space for which subcritical and supercritical bifurcations exist are identified. These regions are verified by numerical simulation of the time-dependent, nonlinear ODEs for the selected points in the operating parameter space using MATLAB ODE solver.