Shear flow instabilities in shallow-water magnetohydrodynamics

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Publication:2812062

DOI10.1017/JFM.2015.718zbMATH Open1338.76136arXiv1502.00131OpenAlexW3098865666WikidataQ59894892 ScholiaQ59894892MaRDI QIDQ2812062FDOQ2812062


Authors: J. Mak, S. D. Griffiths, D. W. Hughes Edit this on Wikidata


Publication date: 16 June 2016

Published in: Journal of Fluid Mechanics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Within the framework of shallow-water magnetohydrodynamics, we investigate the linear instability of horizontal shear flows, influenced by an aligned magnetic field and stratification. Various classical instability results, such as H{o}iland's growth rate bound and Howard's semi-circle theorem, are extended to this shallow-water system for quite general profiles. Two specific piecewise-constant velocity profiles, the vortex sheet and the rectangular jet, are studied analytically and asymptotically; it is found that the magnetic field and stratification (as measured by the Froude number) are generally both stabilising, but weak instabilities can be found at arbitrarily large Froude number. Numerical solutions are computed for corresponding smooth velocity profiles, the hyperbolic-tangent shear layer and the Bickley jet, for a uniform background field. A generalisation of the long-wave asymptotic analysis of Drazin & Howard (1962) is employed in order to understand the instability characteristics for both profiles. For the shear layer, the mechanism underlying the primary instability is interpreted in terms of counter-propagating Rossby waves, thereby allowing an explication of the stabilising effects of the magnetic field and stratification.


Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.00131




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