Level crossing instabilities in inviscid isothermal compressible Couette flow

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Krishnaswami, Govind S., Sachdev, Sonakshi, Sinha, Pritish
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917881251364864
author Krishnaswami, Govind S.
Sachdev, Sonakshi
Sinha, Pritish
author_facet Krishnaswami, Govind S.
Sachdev, Sonakshi
Sinha, Pritish
contents We study the linear stability of inviscid steady parallel flow of an ideal gas in a channel of finite width. Compressible isothermal two-dimensional monochromatic perturbations are considered. The eigenvalue problem governing density and velocity perturbations is a compressible version of Rayleigh's equation and involves two parameters: a flow Mach number $M$ and the perturbation wavenumber $k$. For an odd background velocity profile, there is a $\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry and growth rates $γ$ come in symmetrically placed 4-tuples in the complex eigenplane. Specializing to uniform background vorticity Couette flow, we find an infinite tower of noninflectional eigenmodes and derive stability theorems and bounds on growth rates. We show that eigenmodes are neutrally stable for small $k$ and small $M$ but that they otherwise display an infinite sequence of stability transitions with increasing $k$ or $M$. Using a search algorithm based on the Fredholm alternative, we find that the transitions are associated to level crossings between neighboring eigenmodes. Repeated level crossings result in windows of instability. For a given eigenmode, they are arranged in a zebra-like striped pattern on the $k$-$M$ plane. A canonical square-root power law form for $γ(k,M)$ in the vicinity of a stability transition is identified. In addition to the discrete spectrum, we find a continuous spectrum of eigenmodes that are always neutrally stable but fail to be smooth across critical layers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_20813
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Level crossing instabilities in inviscid isothermal compressible Couette flow
Krishnaswami, Govind S.
Sachdev, Sonakshi
Sinha, Pritish
Fluid Dynamics
Mathematical Physics
We study the linear stability of inviscid steady parallel flow of an ideal gas in a channel of finite width. Compressible isothermal two-dimensional monochromatic perturbations are considered. The eigenvalue problem governing density and velocity perturbations is a compressible version of Rayleigh's equation and involves two parameters: a flow Mach number $M$ and the perturbation wavenumber $k$. For an odd background velocity profile, there is a $\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry and growth rates $γ$ come in symmetrically placed 4-tuples in the complex eigenplane. Specializing to uniform background vorticity Couette flow, we find an infinite tower of noninflectional eigenmodes and derive stability theorems and bounds on growth rates. We show that eigenmodes are neutrally stable for small $k$ and small $M$ but that they otherwise display an infinite sequence of stability transitions with increasing $k$ or $M$. Using a search algorithm based on the Fredholm alternative, we find that the transitions are associated to level crossings between neighboring eigenmodes. Repeated level crossings result in windows of instability. For a given eigenmode, they are arranged in a zebra-like striped pattern on the $k$-$M$ plane. A canonical square-root power law form for $γ(k,M)$ in the vicinity of a stability transition is identified. In addition to the discrete spectrum, we find a continuous spectrum of eigenmodes that are always neutrally stable but fail to be smooth across critical layers.
title Level crossing instabilities in inviscid isothermal compressible Couette flow
topic Fluid Dynamics
Mathematical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.20813