Free boundary effects on stability of two phase planar fluid motion in annulus. Part I: Migration of the stable mode

Abstract

We study the linearized stability of a planar dynamical model describing two-phase perfect fluid circulating around a circle with a sufficiently large radius within a central gravitational field. The model is associated with the spatial and temporal structure of the zonally averaged global-scale atmospheric longitudinal circulation around the Earth. Two cases are studied separately; in the first one, the simulations were carried out using the rigid lid approximation at the upper boundary of the outer atmospheric layer. In the second one, the free boundary nonlinear conditions (kinematic and dynamic) were assumed on the outer atmospheric layer. For the both cases, a certain family of steady, explicit solutions which have circular streamlines was considered. The governing equations were linearized at these solutions to find the typical wave numbers of the interfacial wave perturbation to the basic state at which the destabilizing effect of shear, which overcomes the stabilizing effect of stratification, occurs. It is shown that for the both cases, the model always have the same two potentially unstable wave modes while there always exist two wave modes which are stable for any wavelengths. The behavior of the stable and unstable modes were compared for the both cases to investigate the effects of the free boundary on the mixing process at the interface.