Nonmodal Analysis of Temporal Transverse Shear Instabilities in Shallow Flows

Abstract

Shallow flows are those whose width is significantly larger than their depth. In these types of flows, two dimensional coherent structures can be generated and can influence the flow greatly by the lateral transfer of mass and momentum. The development of coherent structures as a result of flow instabilities has been a topic of interest for environmental fluid mechanics for decades. Studies on the use of linear modal stability analysis is commonly found in literature. However, the relatively recent development in the field of hydrodynamic stability suggests that the traditional linear modal stability analysis does not describe the behaviour of the perturbations in finite time. The discrepancy between asymptotic behaviour and finite time behaviour is particularly large in shear driven flows and it is most likely to be the case for shallow flows. This study aims to provide a better understanding of finite time growth of perturbation energy in shallow flows. The three cases of shallow flows evaluated are the mixing layer, jet and wake. The critical cases are obtained through the linear modal analysis and nonmodal analysis was conducted to show the transient behaviour in finite time for what is so-called marginally stable. Finally, the thesis concludes by generalizing the finite time energy growth in the S-k space.