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Stability of a stratified fluid with a vertically moving sidewall

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2008

FRANÇOIS BLANCHETTE ,
THOMAS PEACOCK  and
RÉMI COUSIN
FRANÇOIS BLANCHETTE
Affiliation:
Sch. Natural Sciences, University of California Merced, 5200 N. Lake Rd, Merced, CA 95343, USA
THOMAS PEACOCK
Affiliation:
Dept. Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
RÉMI COUSIN
Affiliation:
Dept. Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
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Abstract

We present the results of a combined theoretical and experimental study of the stability of a uniformly stratified fluid bounded by a sidewall moving vertically with constant velocity. This arrangement is perhaps the simplest in which boundary effects can drive instability and, potentially, layering in a stratified fluid. Our investigations reveal that for a given stratification and diffusivity of the stratifying agent, the sidewall boundary-layer flow becomes linearly unstable when the wall velocity exceeds a critical value. The onset of instability is clearly observed in the experiments, and there is good quantitative agreement with some predictions of the linear stability analysis.

Type
Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 609 , 25 August 2008 , pp. 305 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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