In this work, we study the Sobolev stability of shear flows near Couette in the 2D incompressible magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) equations with background magnetic field $(\alpha,0 )^\top$ on $\mathbb {T}\times \mathbb {R}$. More precisely, for sufficiently large $\alpha$, we show that when the initial datum of the shear flow satisfies $\left \| U(y)-y\right \|_{H^{N+6}}\ll 1$, with $N>1$, and the initial perturbations ${u}_{\mathrm {in}}$ and ${b}_{\mathrm {in}}$ satisfy $\left \| ( {u}_{\mathrm {in}},{b}_{\mathrm {in}}) \right \| _{H^{N+1}}=\epsilon \ll \nu ^{\frac 56+\tilde \delta }$ for any fixed $\tilde \delta >0$, then the solution of the 2D MHD equations remains $\nu ^{-(\frac {1}{3}+\frac {\tilde \delta }{2})}\epsilon$-close to $( e^{\nu t \partial _{yy}}U(y),0)^\top$ for all $t>0$.

A viscous fluid is confined between two smooth horizontal walls, in a vertical channel. The upper wall may move with constant speed, but the lower wall is stationary and a portion of it is heated. A plume of heated fluid develops, and may also be swept downstream by the motion of the upper wall. When the heating effect is small and the upper plate does not move, a closed-form solution for the temperature profile is presented. A numerical spectral method is then presented, and allows highly accurate nonlinear solutions to be obtained, for the temperature and the fluid motion. These are compared against the closed-form solution in the linearized case, and the effects of nonlinearity on temperature and velocity are revealed. The results also show that periodic plume shedding from the heated region can occur in the nonlinear case.

We consider inviscid, incompressible shear flows with variable density and variable cross section. For this problem, we derived a new estimate for the growth rate of an unstable mode and a parabolic instability region which intersects semiellipse instability region under some condition.

This paper describes an adaptive preconditioner for numerical continuation of incompressible Navier–Stokes flows based on Stokes preconditioning [42] which has been used successfully in studies of pattern formation in convection. The preconditioner takes the form of the Helmholtz operator I–ΔtL which maps the identity (no preconditioner) for Δt≪1 to Laplacian preconditioning for Δt≫1. It is built on a first order Euler time-discretization scheme and is part of the family of matrix-free methods. The preconditioner is tested on two fluid configurations: three-dimensional doubly diffusive convection and a two-dimensional projection of a shear flow. In the former case, it is found that Stokes preconditioning is more efficient for , away from the values used in the literature. In the latter case, the simple use of the preconditioner is not sufficient and it is necessary to split the system of equations into two subsystems which are solved simultaneously using two different preconditioners, one of which is parameter dependent. Due to the nature of these applications and the flexibility of the approach described, this preconditioner is expected to help in a wide range of applications.

In this work the Laguerre basis for the biharmonic equation introduced by Jie Shen is employed in the spectral solution of self-similar problems of the boundary layer theory. An original Petrov-Galerkin formulation of the Falkner-Skan equation is presented which is based on a judiciously chosen special basis function to capture the asymptotic behaviour of the unknown. A spectral method of remarkable simplicity is obtained for computing Falkner-Skan-Cooke boundary layer flows. The accuracy and efficiency of the Laguerre spectral approximation is illustrated by determining the linear stability of nonseparated and separated flows according to the Orr-Sommerfeld equation. The pentadiagonal matrices representing the derivative operators are explicitly provided in an Appendix to aid an immediate implementation of the spectral solution algorithms.