Spectral stability of inviscid roll waves (Q1737562)

The authors provide an analytical and numerical study of spectral stability of periodic solutions to the inviscid Saint-Venant equation \begin{align*} \partial_t h + \partial_x q & = 0,\\ \partial_t q + \partial_x\left( \frac{q^2}{h}+\frac{h^2}{2F^2} \right) & = h -\frac{|q| q}{h^2}. \end{align*} Here \(h\) denotes the water height in an inclined channel, \(q\) is the total flow, and \(F\) is the Froude number. The aim of the present paper is a spectral stability analysis for periodic roll wave solutions with one single shock discontinuity beyond the onset regime, where \(F\) is close to 2, hence including Froude numbers which are relevant in hydraulic engineering. The authors introduce the periodic Evans-Lopatinsky determinant \(\Delta(\lambda,\xi)\) whose vanishing corresponds to the existence of non-trivial solution to a related Floquet eigenvalue problem. Using the special structure of \(\Delta\) together with numerical evidence the authors conclude that a first-order expansion of \(\Delta\) suffices to determine the low-frequency stability boundaries. In addition, they derive a formal Whitham modulation equation and discuss the relation between the stability of this modulation equation and the Evans-Lopatinsky determinant. For high-frequency instability the authors construct a stability index which determines whether (potential) unstable spectra remain bounded or contains unbounded components. Again, numerical evidence is used to show that the case of unbounded spectrum does not occur and therefore no high-frequency instabilities exist. Another analytical result concerns an instability index that determines co-periodic and subharmonic real frequency instabilities. Combining this instability index with the low-frequency results shows that the stability region is bounded and that for sufficiently large Froude numbers all roll waves are unstable. The analytical results are finally compared to numerical calculations in the inviscid and the viscous case. It turns out that apart from Froude numbers close to the onset the lower stability boundary in the viscous and the inviscid case are remarkably close.