Study of the stability of compressible Couette flow

Thesis/Dissertation · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1988

OSTI ID:5172198

Girard, J J

This study is concerned with a two-dimensional disturbance of plane Couette flow. All received analysis of the basis problem have led to the conclusion that the flow is inconditionally stable. All of the literature assumed the fluid was incompressible. The assumption that a fluid is incompressible neglects solutions to the problem. The motivation of the analysis presented here is a hypothesis that some of the acoustic disturbances in the fluid, usually neglected, may interact with the mean vorticity to produce more sound. The fluid considered is a viscous, heat-conducting, ideal gas. For the cases investigated, most solutions exhibited stability. There were found, however, solutions at somewhat unrealistically high Mach numbers which exhibited unstable nature. Further, it was found that for even low Mach number flows, the sound solution was the least stable solution. It is thought that the interaction between the sound perturbation and the mean flow has fed energy to the disturbance from the mean flow. Enough energy was transferred to balance some of the viscous dissipation. At low Mach numbers, for the investigated cases, not enough energy was transferred to tip the flow to instability.

• Research Organization: Washington State Univ., Pullman, WA (USA)
• OSTI ID: 5172198
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
420400* -- Engineering-- Heat Transfer & Fluid Flow
COMPRESSIBLE FLOW
COUETTE FLOW
DISTURBANCES
FLUID FLOW
GAS FLOW
IDEAL FLOW
MACH NUMBER
STABILITY
VELOCITY
VISCOUS FLOW