Global stability in the Bénard problem for a mixture with superimposed plane parallel shear flows

The Lyapunov direct method is used to study the non‐linear stability of parallel convective shear flows of a mixture heated and salted from below for any Schmidt and Prandtl numbers. Global non‐linear exponential stability for small values of Reynolds number R is found and conditional stability results up to the criticality which are independent of R are given for rigid and stress‐free boundaries. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.