Conditions of stability and instability for a pair of arbitrarily stratified compressible fluids in an arbitrary non-uniform gravity field

The work continues and develops authors’ previous investigation of stability in the small for a two-layer system of inhomogeneous compressible fluids in the uniform gravity field. Here we present a solution of a similar problem in the case of arbitrary non-uniform potential gravity field. The equilibrium stratification of both density and elastic properties of the fluids is supposed arbitrary, as well as the shape of open on top reservoir filled by the fluids. The problem of stability of equilibrium is analyzed as the corresponding problem for the non-linearly elastic bodies, basing on the static energy criterion with regard for the boundary conditions at all parts of the boundary. The crucial element of the analysis is conversion of the quadratic functional of second variation of total potential energy of the system into a “canonical” form that enables to determine its sign. Making use of this canonical form, we obtain almost coinciding with each other necessary and sufficient conditions for stability (those being valid also for an arbitrary number of layers).