An experimental investigation of the stability of plane Poiseuille flow

Abstract

Stability experiments were made on plane Poiseuille flow generated in a long channel of a rectangular cross-section with a width-to-depth ratio of 27·4. By reducing the background turbulence down to a level of 0·05 %, we succeeded in maintaining the flow laminar at Reynolds numbers up to 8000, which is much larger than the critical Reynolds number of the linear theory, about 6000. The downstream development of the sinusoidal disturbance introduced by the vibrating ribbon technique was studied in detail at various frequencies in the range of Reynolds number from 3000 to 7500. This paper presents the experimental results and clarifies the linear stability, the nonlinear subcritical instability and the breakdown leading to the transition.