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ON TRANSITION VIA TRANSIENT GROWTH IN COUETTE FLOW

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A possible explanation for the transition phenomenon in Couette flow is the mechanism of transient growth. In this work we consider the instability of a two dimensional base-flow, consisting of Couette flow and pair of streamwise independent counterrotating vortices (CVPs). We show analytically that the inclusion of nonlinear interactions between the base-flow and the CVPs is required in order to obtain eigenvalues that correspond to transition scenarios obtained using a direct numerical simulation (DNS).
The relative dominance of the inflection points in the wall-normal and spanwise directions is studied using linear and nonlinear analysis.

Author(s):

Michael Karp    
Faculty of Aerospace engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of technology
Israel

Jacob Cohen    
Faculty of Aerospace engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of technology
Israel