Flow stability in a channel with porous walls

We study the stability of the flow which forms in a plane channel with influx of an incompressible viscous fluid through its porous parallel walls. Under certain assumptions the study of the stability reduces to the solution of modified Orr-Sommerfeld equation accounting for the transverse component of the main-flow velocity. As a result of numerical integration of this equation we find the dependence of the local critical Reynolds number on the blowing Reynolds number R₀, which may be defined by two factors: the variation of the longitudinal velocity profile with R₀ and the presence of the transverse velocity component. A qualitative comparison is made of the computational results with experimental data on transition from laminar to turbulent flow regimes in channels with porous walls, which confirms that it is necessary to take into account the effect of the transverse component of the main-flow velocity on the main-flow stability in the problem in question.Flows in channels with porous walls are of interest for hydrodynamic stability theory in view of the fact that they can be described by the exact solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations by analogy with the known Poiseuille and Couette flows. However, in contrast with the latter, the flows in channels with porous walls (studies in 1], for example) will be nonparallel.The theory of hydrodynamic stability of parallel flows has frequently been applied to nonparallel flows (in the boundary layer, for example). In so doing the nonparallel nature of the flow has been taken into account only by varying the longitudinal velocity component profiles. A study was made in 2, 3] of the effect of the transverse component of the main flow on its stability. In the case of the boundary layer in a compressible gas, a considerable influence of the transverse velocity component on the critical Reynolds number was found in 2] and confirmed experimentally. A strong influence of the transverse velocity component on the instability region was also found in 3] in a study of the flow stability in a boundary layer with suction for an incompressible fluid.