The double-boundary-layer theory of Stuart (1963, 1966) and Riley (1965, 1967) is employed to investigate the mass transport velocity due to two-dimensional standing waves in a system comprising two homogeneous fluids of different densities and viscosities. The most important double-boundary-layer structure occurs in the neighbourhood of the oscillating interface, and the possible existence of jet-like motions is envisaged at nodal positions, owing to the nature of the mean flows in the layers. In practice, the magnitude of the mass transport velocity can be a significant fraction of that of the primary, oscillatory velocity.

This paper presents experimental data obtained for the refraction of a plane shock wave at a carbon dioxide–helium interface. The gases were separated initially by a delicate polymer membrane. Both regular and irregular wave systems were studied, and a feature of the latter system was the appearance of bound and free precursor shocks. Agreement between theory and experiment is good for regular systems, but for irregular ones it is sometimes necessary to take into account the effect of the membrane inertia to obtain good agreement. The basis for the analysis of irregular systems is one-dimensional piston theory and Snell's law.

We consider in this paper the hydromagnetic flow of a viscous, incompressible, electrically conducting fluid induced by the differential rotation of an insulating boundary. A uniform magnetic field parallel to the axis of rotation is applied at a large distance from the interface. The method of matched asymptotic expansions is employed to study the hydromagnetic coupling between different regions of fluid flow and the interior of the insulating boundary.

Experiments on ‘head-on’ collisions between two solitary waves show that the waves reach a maximum amplitude greater than twice the initial wave amplitude and that they suffer a time delay during their interaction. These results are compared with available theories and found to be in qualitative but not quantitative agreement.

Approximate constitutive equations are derived for a dilute suspension of rigid spheroidal particles with Brownian rotations, and the behaviour of the approximations is explored in various flows. Following the suggestion made in the general formulation in part 1, the approximations take the form of Hand's (1962) fluid model, in which the anisotropic microstructure is described by a single second-order tensor. Limiting forms of the exact constitutive equations are derived for weak flows and for a class of strong flows. In both limits the microstructure is shown to be entirely described by a second-order tensor. The proposed approximations are simple interpolations between the limiting forms of the exact equations. Predictions from the exact and approximate constitutive equations are compared for a variety of flows, including some which are not in the class of strong flows analysed.