| Abstract: | It was established by Arnol'd [1] that the conservation laws for the energy and vorticity can be used to establish sufficient conditions of stability of two-dimensional curvilinear flows of an ideal incompressible fluid in the exact nonlinear formulation. It is shown below that one can obtain similarly conditions of stability of two-dimensional curvilinear steady flows of an ideal barotropic fluid in the linear approximation. One of the conditions has a significance similar to Rayleigh's criterion and its generalization by Arnol'd [1]; the other is the condition of subsonic flow. In addition, a variational principle is established and an expression found for the second variation of the corresponding functional; these can be used to prove the stability of these flows in the exact nonlinear formulation.Translated from Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR. Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No. 5, pp. 19–25, September–October, 1981.I am sincerely grateful to V. L. Berdichevskii and A. G. Kulikovskii for constructive advice. |
