Sublayer of Prandtl boundary layers (Q1661666)

The stability of Prandtl's boundary layers is investigated in the vanishing viscosity limit \(\nu \to 0\). The Prandtl boundary layer correction \(u_P\) is introduced in the transition from a solution \(u_{\nu}\) of the Navier-Stokes equations to a solution of the Euler equations \(u_{0}\) as the viscosity tends to zero. It is given by the asymptotic formula \(u_{\nu}(t,x,y) = u_{0}(t,x,y)+ u_P(t,x,\frac{y}{\sqrt{\nu}})\) where the boundary layer variable \(y\) has the order \(\sqrt{\nu}\). The authors establish a nonlinear instability result for the classical \(O(\sqrt{\nu})\) Prandtl's layer. It involves a boundary sublayer of size \(O(\nu^{3/4})\). The authors prove that the Prandtl's layer and the boundary sublayer cannot be simultaneously nonlinearly stable in the space \(L^{\infty}\).