Resonance properties of two-dimensional wave disturbances in a boundary layer

Abstract

The nonlinear development of disturbances of the traveling wave type in the boundary layer on a flat plate is examined. The investigation is restricted to two-dimensional disturbances periodic with respect to the longitudinal space coordinate and evolving in time. Attention is concentrated on the interactions of two waves of finite amplitude with multiple wave numbers. The problem is solved by numerically integrating the Navier-Stokes equations for an incompressible fluid. The pseudospectral method used in the calculations is an extension to the multidimensional case of a method previously developed by the authors [1, 2] in connection with the study of nonlinear wave processes in one-dimensional systems. Its use makes it possible to obtain reliable results even at very large amplitudes of the velocity perturbations (up to 20% of the free-stream velocity). The time dependence of the amplitudes of the disturbances and their phase velocities is determined. It is shown that for a fairly large amplitude of the harmonic and a particular choice of wave number and Reynolds number the interacting waves are synchronized. In this case the amplitude of the subharmonic grows strongly and quickly reaches a value comparable with that for the harmonic. As distinct from the resonance effects reported in [3, 4], which are typical only of the three-dimensional problem, the effect described is essentially two-dimensional.