Stability of plane Couette flow for high Reynolds number

Abstract

AbstractExperimental evidence shows that plane Couette flow becomes unstable when the Reynolds number R reaches certain critical values. Linear stability theory does not predict these observations and has been unable to locate these instabilities. A Chebyshev/QR numerical technique is used to investigate much higher values of R than those previously tested. In particular, values of R up to 108 are confidently tested, whereas previously values of R up to only 2 × 104 have been considered.