Stability of transonic shock-fronts in three-dimensional conical steady potential flow past a perturbed cone

Abstract

For an upstream supersonic flow past a straight-sided cone in $\R^3$ whose vertex angle is less than the critical angle, a transonic (supersonic-subsonic) shock-front attached to the cone vertex can be formed in the flow. In this paper we analyze the stability of transonic shock-fronts in three-dimensional steady potential flow past a perturbed cone. We establish that the self-similar transonic shock-front solution is conditionally stable in structure with respect to the conical perturbation of the cone boundary and the upstream flow in appropriate function spaces. In particular, it is proved that the slope of the shock-front tends asymptotically to the slope of the unperturbed self-similar shock-front downstream at infinity.