15 research outputs found
Spectral stability of noncharacteristic isentropic Navier-Stokes boundary layers
Building on work of Barker, Humpherys, Lafitte, Rudd, and Zumbrun in the
shock wave case, we study stability of compressive, or "shock-like", boundary
layers of the isentropic compressible Navier-Stokes equations with gamma-law
pressure by a combination of asymptotic ODE estimates and numerical Evans
function computations. Our results indicate stability for gamma in the interval
[1, 3] for all compressive boundary-layers, independent of amplitude, save for
inflow layers in the characteristic limit (not treated). Expansive inflow
boundary-layers have been shown to be stable for all amplitudes by Matsumura
and Nishihara using energy estimates. Besides the parameter of amplitude
appearing in the shock case, the boundary-layer case features an additional
parameter measuring displacement of the background profile, which greatly
complicates the resulting case structure. Moreover, inflow boundary layers turn
out to have quite delicate stability in both large-displacement and
large-amplitude limits, necessitating the additional use of a mod-two stability
index studied earlier by Serre and Zumbrun in order to decide stability
Higher-order corrections to the short-pulse equation
Using renormalization group techniques, we derive an extended short- pulse
equation as approximation to a nonlinear wave equation. We investigate the new
equation numerically and show that the new equation captures efficiently
higher- order effects on pulse propagation in cubic nonlinear media. We
illustrate our findings using one- and two-soliton solutions of the first-order
short-pulse equation as initial conditions in the nonlinear wave equation
The Erpenbeck high frequency instability theorem for ZND detonations
The rigorous study of spectral stability for strong detonations was begun by
J.J. Erpenbeck in [Er1]. Working with the Zeldovitch-von Neumann-D\"oring (ZND)
model, which assumes a finite reaction rate but ignores effects like viscosity
corresponding to second order derivatives, he used a normal mode analysis to
define a stability function V(\tau,\eps) whose zeros in
correspond to multidimensional perturbations of a steady detonation profile
that grow exponentially in time. Later in a remarkable paper [Er3] he provided
strong evidence, by a combination of formal and rigorous arguments, that for
certain classes of steady ZND profiles, unstable zeros of exist for
perturbations of sufficiently large transverse wavenumber \eps, even when the
von Neumann shock, regarded as a gas dynamical shock, is uniformly stable in
the sense defined (nearly twenty years later) by Majda. In spite of a great
deal of later numerical work devoted to computing the zeros of V(\tau,\eps),
the paper \cite{Er3} remains the only work we know of that presents a detailed
and convincing theoretical argument for detecting them.
The analysis in [Er3] points the way toward, but does not constitute, a
mathematical proof that such unstable zeros exist. In this paper we identify
the mathematical issues left unresolved in [Er3] and provide proofs, together
with certain simplifications and extensions, of the main conclusions about
stability and instability of detonations contained in that paper.
The main mathematical problem, and our principal focus here, is to determine
the precise asymptotic behavior as \eps\to \infty of solutions to a linear
system of ODEs in , depending on \eps and a complex frequency as
parameters, with turning points on the half-line
Contents
The rigorous study of spectral stability for ZND detonations was begun by J.J. Erpenbeck in [E1]. He used a normal mode analysis to define a stability function V (λ, η), whose zeros in ℜλ> 0 correspond to multidimensional perturbations of a steady planar profile that grow exponentially with time. In [E3] he was able to prove that for large classes of steady ZND profiles, unstable zeros of V always exist in the high frequency regime, even when the von Neumann shock, regarded as a gas dynamical shock, is uniformly stable in the sense (later) defined by Majda; subsequent numerical work has shown that unstable zeros usually exist in the medium frequency regime as well. In this paper we begin a rigorous study of the implications for nonlinear stability of the spectral instabilities just described. We show that in spite of the existence of unstable zeros of V (λ, η), one can prove the finite (but arbitrarily long) time existence of slightly curved, nonsteady, multidimensional detonation fronts for ideal polytropic gases in both the ZND and Chapman-Jouguet models. In the ZND case we show tha