Instabilities of Flows and Transition to Turbulence

Addressing classical material as well as new perspectives, Instabilities of Flows and Transition to Turbulence presents a concise, up-to-date treatment of theory and applications of viscous flow instability. It covers materials from classical instability to contemporary research areas including bluff body flow instability, mixed convection flows, and application areas of aerospace and other branches of engineering. Transforms and perturbation techniques are used to link linear instability with receptivity of flows, as developed by the author.

The book:

• Provides complete coverage of transition concepts, including receptivity and flow instability
• Introduces linear receptivity using bi-lateral Fourier-Laplace transform techniques
• Presents natural laminar flow (NLF) airfoil analysis and design as a practical application of classical and bypass transition
• Distinguishes strictly between instability and receptivity, which leads to identification of wall- and free stream-modes
• Describes energy-based receptivity theory for the description of bypass transitions

Instabilities of Flows and Transition to Turbulence has evolved into an account of the personal research interests of the author over the years. A conscious effort has been made to keep the treatment at an elementary level requiring rudimentary knowledge of calculus, the Fourier-Laplace transform, and complex analysis. The book is equally amenable to undergraduate students, as well as researchers in the field.

Introduction to Instability and Transition. Computing Transitional and Turbulent Flows. Instability and Transition in Flows. Bypass Transition: Theory, Computations and Experiments. Spatio-Temporal Wave Front and Transition. Nonlinear Effects: Multiple Hopf Bifurcations and Proper Orthogonal Decomposition. Stability and Transition of Mixed Convection Flows. Instabilities of Three-Dimensional Flows. Analysis and Design of Natural Laminar Flow Airfoils.

About the author: Professor Tapan K. Sengupta is affiliated with the High Performance Computing Laboratory in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India.