3-DIMENSIONAL LINEAR TEMPORAL STABILITY O F ROTATING CHANNEL FLOW

The linear temporal three-dimensional instability of incompressible vi scous flow in a rotating divergent channel is studied. The boundary be tween stable and unstable regions is plotted as a function of the diff erent physical parameters of the problem. It is shown that the instabi lity is caused by the channel rotation when the half-angle of the chan nel, ct, is small and it is caused by the channel expansion for large alpha. When alpha is taken constant, we found that rotation has the sa me effect as in plane channel flow where the basic flow is destabilize d by weak rotation and stabilized by strong rotation. (C) Academic des Sciences/Elsevier, Paris.