Tertiary solutions and their stability in rotating plane Couette flow

Abstract

The stability of nonlinear tertiary solutions in rotating plane Couette flow is examined numerically. It is found that the tertiary flows, which bifurcate from two-dimensional streamwise vortex flows, are stable within a certain range of the rotation rate when the Reynolds number is relatively small. The stability boundary is determined by perturbations which are subharmonic in the streamwise direction. As the Reynolds number is increased, the rotation range for the stable tertiary motions is destroyed gradually by oscillatory instabilities. We expect that the tertiary flow is overtaken by time-dependent motions for large Reynolds numbers. The results are compared with the recent experimental observation by Tillmark & Alfredsson (1996).