The van Dommelen and Shen singularity in the Prandtl equations

Abstract

In 1980, van Dommelen and Shen provided a numerical simulation that predicted the spontaneous generation of a singularity in the Prandtl boundary layer equations from a smooth initial datum, for a nontrivial Euler background. In this paper we prove this numerical conjecture by rigorously establishing the finite time blowup of the boundary layer thickness.