Frictional effect on stability of discontinuity interface in tangential velocity of a shallow-water flow

Abstract

We examine a frictional effect on the linear stability of an interface of discontinuity in tangential velocity. The fluid is moving with uniform velocity U in a region but is at rest in the other, and the bottom surface is assumed to exert drag force, quadratic in velocity, on the thin fluid layer. In the absence of the drag, the instability of the Kelvin-Helmholtz type is suppressed for U>8c, with c being the propagating speed of the gravity wave. We find by asymptotic analyses for both small and large values of the drag strength that the drag, regardless of its strength, makes the flow unstable for the whole range of the Froude number U/c.