Prandtl

Invalidity of Prandtl’s boundary layers

ttn12 boundary layers, fluid dynamics, Instabilities, New papers , ,

I’ve just submitted this paper with Grenier (ENS Lyon) which studies Prandtl’s boundary layer asymptotic expansions for incompressible fluids on the half-space in the inviscid limit. In 1904, Prandtl introduced his well known boundary layers in order to describe the transition from Navier-Stokes to Euler equations in the inviscid limit.

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Sublayer of Prandtl boundary layers

ttn12 boundary layers, fluid dynamics, Instabilities, Uncategorized , , ,

The aim of this paper (arXiv:1705.04672), with E. Grenier, is to investigate the stability of Prandtl boundary layers in the vanishing viscosity limit: {\nu \rightarrow 0}.  In his CPAM2000 paper, Grenier proved that there exists no Prandtl’s asymptotic expansion involving one Prandtl’s boundary layer with thickness of order {\sqrt\nu}, which describes the inviscid limit of Navier-Stokes equations. The instability gives rise to a viscous boundary sublayer whose thickness is of order {\nu^{3/4}}. In this paper, we point out how the stability of the classical Prandtl’s layer is linked to the stability of this sublayer. In particular, we prove that the two layers cannot both be nonlinearly stable in {L^\infty}.  That is, either the Prandtl’s layer or the boundary sublayer is nonlinearly unstable in the sup norm.

Grenier’s nonlinear iterative scheme

ttn12 boundary layers, fluid dynamics, Instabilities ,

In his paper [Grenier, CPAM 2000], Grenier introduced a nonlinear iterative scheme to prove the instability of Euler and Prandtl equations. Recently, the scheme is also proved to be decisive in the study of water waves: [Ming-Rousset-Tzvetkov, SIAM J. Math. Anal., 2015], and plasma physics: [Han-Kwan & Hauray, CMP 2015] or my recent paper with Han-Kwan (see also my previous blog discussions). I am certain that it can be useful in other contexts as well. In this blog post, I’d like to give a sketch of the scheme to prove instability.

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