Investigation of Mechanisms of Excitation and Growth of Unstable Perturbations in Pulsating Flows

Abstract

General laws of the processes of generation and amplification of secondary perturbations in oscillating viscous fluid flows are studied theoretically. The stability and receptivity are analyzed with reference to perturbations generated by fluctuations of the flow rate of Poiseuille flow induced by small two-dimensional roughnesses of the channel walls. It is shown that the presence of roughness leads to excitation in the flow of perturbations at all multiples of the main flow oscillation frequency. Using the Fourier transform along the streamwise coordinate, the problem of calculating the frequency harmonics is reduced to a system of equations of the Orr-Sommerfeld type interrelated via the oscillatory component of the main flow. On the basis of an investigation of the analytic properties of the Fourier-image it is shown that upstream and downstream of the roughness the perturbation can be represented in the form of a superposition of modes of the time-dependent Poiseuille flow. The modes are classified and their spectrum is calculated. The structure of the mean-square fluctuations generated by free perturbations is investigated. Examples of calculating the evolution of forced perturbations are given for cases in which the scattering of the oscillations of the main flow on the roughness leads to the generation of one or two modes growing downstream.