The Quarterly Journal of Mechanics and Applied Mathematics Advance Access originally published online on July 28, 2007
The Quarterly Journal of Mechanics and Applied Mathematics 2007 60(3):391-396; doi:10.1093/qjmam/hbm014
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A note on the linear stability of a two-dimensional Stokes layer
( School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia )

( School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Western Australia, Crawley 6009, Australia )
bassom{at}maths.uwa.edu.au
Received 21 March 2007.
Revise 18 May 2007.
| Abstract |
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The fluid motion generated adjacent to an infinite flat plate undergoing orbital motion in its own plane is a generalization of the classical Stokes-layer profile. We show that the stabilities of these flows can be related to each other via two transformations directly analogous to the well-known Squire transformation. The main result obtained is that, in general, the two-dimensional Stokes layer is more stable than the corresponding unidirectional Stokes layer. A further by-product of the analysis is the construction of a shear flow having identical neutral stability conditions when subject to either two- or three-dimensional disturbances.