We consider the stability of a compressible shear flow separating two streams
of different speeds and temperatures. The velocity and temperature profiles in
this mixing layer are hyperbolic tangents.
The normal mode analysis of the flow stability reduces to an eigenvalue
problem for the pressure perturbation. We briefly describe the numerical method
that we used to solve this problem. Then, we introduce the notions of the
absolute and convective instabilities and examine the effects of Mach number,
and the velocity and temperature ratios of each stream on the transition
between convective and absolute instabilities. Finally, we discuss the
implication of the results presented in this paper for the heliopause
stability.
Authors: P. Caillol and M. Ruderman
Projects: None
Publication Status: accepted by Astronomical Notes (Astron. Nachrichten)
Last Modified: 2007-05-23 08:34