Open shear flow instabilities (Q2708428)

This review paper introduces the concepts of convective and absolute instabilities and mathematical analysis governing such instabilities in the context of open shear flows. The author establishes a clear distinction between the dynamics of noise amplifiers corresponding to convective instability, and extrinsic dynamics of flow oscillators corresponding to absolute instability. The next sections give a theoretical description of the resulting self-sustained time-periodic states in terms of global modes, i.e. extended wavepackets. The paper also contains the derivation of a local nonlinear dispersion relation from which nonlinear global modes can be constructed.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEContents: 1. Introduction, 2. Open shear flows: amplifiers versus oscillators; 3. Absolute and convective instabilities in parallel flows; 4. Global instability analyses; 5. Absolute/convective and local/global instabilities in nonlinear systems; 6. Epilogue.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 0952.00020].