Nonlinear cellular motions in Poiseuille channel flow

Abstract

We expand the equations describing plane Poiseuille flow in Fourier series in the co-ordinates in the plane parallel to the bounding walls. There results an infinite system of equations for the amplitudes, which are functions of time and of the cross-stream co-ordinate. This system is drastically truncated and the resulting set of equations is solved accurately by a finite difference method. Three truncations are considered: (I) a single mode with dependence only on the downstream co-ordinate and time, (II) the mode of (I) plus its first harmonic, (III) a single three-dimensional mode. For all three cases, for a variety of initial conditions, the solutions evolve to a steady state as seen in a particular moving frame of reference. No runaways are encountered.