In this article, we investigate, via a perturbation analysis, some importan
t nonlinear features related to the process of transition to turbulence in
a wall-bounded flow subject to a spatially localized disturbance that is ha
rmonic in time. We show that the perturbation expansion, truncated at secon
d order, is able to capture the generation of streamwise vorticity as a wea
kly nonlinear effect, The results of the perturbation approach are discusse
d in comparison with direct numerical simulation data for a sample case by
extracting the contribution of the different orders. The main aim is to pro
vide a tool to select the most effective nonlinear interactions to enlighte
n the essential features of the transitional process.