Acoustic–vorticity coupling in linearly varying shear flows using the WKB method

Abstract

The evolution of acoustic and vorticity perturbations in a two-dimensional incompressible linear flow is investigated. A weighted decomposition of the flow into a hyperbolic part and a rotation part allows continuous spanning of all linear flows such as hyperbolic flow, plane Couette flow and rigid rotation for instance. Using the Kelvin non-modal approach, the equations governing the time evolution of plane wave perturbations are reduced into a system of three first-order ordinary differential equations. This system is analysed using a WKB method where the small parameter ε is the ratio of the shear rate of the flow over the typical frequency of the perturbations. With this method, a basis of three modes naturally appears: two acoustic modes and one vorticity mode. At finite but small ε , couplings between the modes appear when the length of the wavenumber is minimal. For hyperbolic flow, incident vorticity mode generates the two acoustic modes, and an incident acoustic mode generates the other acoustic mode. More generally, for all flows, the hyperbolic part of the flow is responsible of the coupling between acoustic and vorticity modes, but also of the coupling between the two acoustic modes. These phenomena are illustrated by displaying wavepacket evolutions.