Three-dimensional inviscid waves in buoyant boundary layer flows

James P. Denier, Jillian A K Stott, Andrew P. Bassom

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    2 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The stability of weakly three-dimensional buoyancy-driven boundary layers to travelling waves is considered. It is shown that in the absence of crossflow inviscid modes are unstable and, as the degree of crossflow is increased, the short waves are the first to be stabilized - longer waves require an enhanced level of three-dimensionality of the basic flow for stabilization. A combination of asymptotic and numerical techniques are used to provide a complete description of the inviscid modes over the whole wavenumber spectrum. The study is also extended to consider pure vortex `roll-cell' modes which can exist within unstably stratified (buoyancy driven) flows and these are found to stabilize in the presence of crossflow.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)89-109
    Number of pages21
    JournalFluid Dynamics Research
    Volume28
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Feb 2001

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