No label defined (Q4945332)

The authors discuss some variational principles that are direct and natural generalizations of \textit{V. I. Arnold}'s principle [PMM, J. Appl. Math. Mech. 29, 1002-1008 (1965; Zbl 0163.19807)] to more sophisticated hydrodynamic systems. These include: a dynamical system ``rigid body + fluid'', which consists either of a body placed in an inviscid rotational flow or a body with a cavity containing fluid; flows of ideal incompressible fluid with contact discontinuities and, in particular, flows with vorticity discontinuities; and finally, magnetohydrodynamic flows of ideal incompressible perfectly conducting fluid. It is shown that all these variational principles can be generalized to cover the situations when the basic state is unsteady, provided that it is steady relative to a coordinate system which either moves along an axis with constant velocity or rotates around a fixed axis with constant angular velocity. For the system ``body + fluid'' such principles have been earlier established and exploited for obtaining stability conditions [the authors, J. Fluid Mech. 386, 43-75 (1999; Zbl 0961.76031)]. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0929.00102].