ANALYSIS OF PARABOLIZED STABILITY

EQUATIONS (PSE) FOR PERTURBED FLOWS

By:
Nishant Kumar

Supervisor:
Dr. Vinod Narayanan

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Gandhinagar
 Contents
• About
• Background
– Navier Stokes Equations
– Orr Sommerfeld Equations (OSE)
• Solution of Orr-Sommerfeld equation in cylindrical equations
• Parabolized Stability Equations (PSE) for Fluid Flow
– Development
– Usage
– 2D-PSE for Incompressible Flow
– PSE Concept in Natural Variables
– Closure and Norm
– Solution Procedure
• Conclusion
• References

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 About
• The parabolized stability equations (PSE) are a new approach to analyse the
streamwise evolution of single or interacting Fourier modes in weakly
nonparallel flows such as boundary layers.
• The concept rests on the decomposition of every mode into a slowly varying
amplitude function and a wave function with slowly varying wave number.
• The neglect of the small second derivatives of the slowly varying functions
with respect to the streamwise variable leads to an initial boundary-value
problem that is solved by numerical marching procedures.
• The PSE approach is valid in convectively unstable flows.
• The PSE codes have developed into a convenient tool to analyse basic
mechanisms in boundary-layer flow.
Here, the emphasis has been laid on the analysis of PSE concept in natural
variables, along with the underlying background and concepts. The
implementation of the equations using FORTRAN codes was done to analyse
the solutions of the equations.

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 Background

Some theoretical background is required for understanding the concept

of hydrodynamic stability and analysis of fluid flows.

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• Navier Stokes Equations

The NSE, along with

• the continuity equation and
• well formulated boundary conditions,
is used to determine the flow field. The NSE is basically a statement of conservation of
momentum. For incompressible flow of Newtonian fluids, the NSE in vector form may
be represented as

The work deals basically with the axisymmetric flows and hence it is beneficial to represent
the N-S equation in cylindrical coordinates systems in non-dimensional form. A change in
variables of the cartesian form of the equation will yield the desired form in cylindrical
coordinates (r,θ,z).

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N-S equations in cylindrical co-ordinates

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• Orr Sommerfeld Equation (OSE)

• Amplification of disturbances: The flow may consist of disturbances caused due to free
stream condition or surface roughness. Disturbances of a certain band of frequencies
get damped by the fluid viscosity and some frequencies get amplified, which may cause
turbulence downstream of the flow.

The OSE is an eigenvalue equation describing the effect of linear two-dimensional

modes of disturbance on a viscous parallel flow. The perturbed velocity field is

where perturbed velocity component is determined from

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In non-dimensional form, OSE can be obtained from the linearized version of NSE. The
final form of OSE can be represented as

Solution of OSE: For the OSE to give non-trivial solution, we must have

It is assumed that the disturbances are temporally growing. Thus, depending on the value
of c, the α-Re plane can be divided into following domains
• c < 0, flow is stable (i.e., disturbances decay),
• c = 0, flow is neutrally stable, and
• c > 0, flow is unstable (i.e., disturbances grow).

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Fig General shape of the neutral stability curve (locus of ci =0 in α-Re space) for a Blasius
boundary layer and for layers with adverse pressure gradients.

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Solution of Orr-Sommerfeld equation in
cylindrical co-ordinates
For axisymmetric flows, to investigate the stability of the basic flow, we study the
evolutions of the perturbations u, v and p requiring that
• total flow parameters satisfy the equations of motion and
• they are constrained by the same flow-forcing boundary conditions as the basic flow.
Here, we consider the perturbed flow to be given as the combination of the unperturbed
mean flow V,P and the perturbations v,p

The disturbances are also assumed to be parallel flows. Then the most general form for
the 1-D disturbance q is that of a travelling wave
• whose amplitude varies with r, and
• which moves along the boundary at an angle θ with respect to the z axis.
In complex notation, the disturbances may be represented as

All disturbances have wave number α and frequency β. They are referred to as Tollmein-
Schlichting waves which are indications of laminar-flow instability.

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Now, we substitute the perturbed velocity components given into the N-S equation and
subtract out the basic flow equalities and neglect higher powers and product of p. The
linearized disturbance equations may then be written as

We eliminate the terms containing P from the r-z andθ-z equations to obtain two equations
with u,v,w as the unknowns. We eliminate the axial velocity term from the above equations
by using the continuity equation, and by incorporating the exponential disturbance
equation, we get

where, dash represents the differentiation with respect to r.

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Considering the flow to be invariable along θ, the above substitution leaves us with a linear
equation and its boundary conditions which are both homogeneous, it follows that the
resulting equation is an eigenvalue problem. The problem can be represented in matrix
form as

The values of the elements of the matrix are given as (here D represents differentiation
wrt r)

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• The equation has three parameters: α, c and ν.
• For a given profile, only a certain continuous but limited sequence of these parameters
the eigenvalues will satisfy the relation.
• The mathematical problem is to find this sequence, which has a different functional
form for spatial versus temporal growth of disturbances.

A FORTRAN program that takes the velocity profile as input and evaluates the
corresponding eigenvalues from the relation given by above eqn. was used to analyse the
flow for stability.

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Parabolized Stability Equations (PSE)
for Fluid Flow
• Development
The laminar-turbulent transition of boundary layer flows led to the linear stability theory,
assuming parallel flow. The resulting eigenvalue problem, expressed as Orr-Sommerfeld
(OSE) and Squire equations, when used for boundary layer transition, showed deviations
from the experimental results for the neutral curve. These discrepancies were attributed to
• the local assumption of parallel flow and
• the consideration of no upstream development of boundary layer.
Consequently, this led to a more general analysis that takes into account both
• the streamwise development and
• upstream data of the instability.
This analysis further led to the PSEs, applicable to 2D-flows (2D-PSE). These equations
are valid for convective instabilities and relax the assumption of parallel flow.

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• Usage
The PSEs are used to analyse the streamwise evolution of Fourier modes in weakly non-
parallel flows.
• It relies on the decomposition of each mode into a slowly varying amplitude function
and a wave function with slowly varying wave number.
• Analogous to the OSE, several stability analyses generalise the flow assumptions in 2D
plane. This concept is inadequate in prediction of breakdown as it neglects the axial
gradients that may influence the vortex.
• This necessitates an analysis technique that can account for velocity and pressure
gradients.
Thus, the 3D-PSE concept originated which has an advantage of being able to solve for
arbitrarily complicated basic states in the x,y plane.

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• 2D-PSE for Incompressible Flow
The continuity equation and non-linear momentum equation for an incompressible fluid
with constant density and viscosity are given by

We consider the stability of 2D steady laminar boundary-layer flows neglecting

• the mean flow, and
• derivatives in the spanwise z direction.
For stability analysis, we decompose the total flow field into the steady laminar basic flow
V,P and the disturbance v,p.

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Under boundary-layer approximation, the basic flow is governed by

For disturbances v,p we obtain the linearized stability equations

For a given basic flow, this system is equivalent to the Navier-Stokes equations and hence
of elliptic type.

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• PSE Concept in Natural Variables
We maintain the decomposition of the disturbance q into an amplitude function q’ and a
wave function and write the disturbance in the form

By substituting the components of above equations into the linearized equations, we

obtain in nondimensional form

where the operators L,M and N act only in y and are given as follows (In these equations,
D represents differentiation wrt y)

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The derivation of above equation involves the following steps:
• The elimination of the pressure by taking the curl of the momentum equations which
provides the vorticity transport equations.
• The Orr-Sommerfeld equation is obtained by subtracting the z derivative of the x-
vorticity equation from the x derivative of the z-vorticity equation and eliminating w,
via continuity equation.

For a proper function α(x),

• the streamwise variation of q’ is governed by the wave function and
• the derivatives qx and αx are small.
The PSE approximation assumes the variation of q and α as sufficiently small to neglect
qxx, αxx, αxqx and their higher derivatives with respect to x. The final equation derived
above is obtained after application of this approximation.

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• Closure and Norm
Solving the PSE as an initial boundary value problem is difficult due to the appearance of
dα/dx which affects the operators. In absence of any information regarding the
streamwise changes, we can impose the restriction αx=0 and absorb all streamwise changes
into the amplitude function.
Alternatively, a streamwise independent norm can be imposed on q. Such a
norm can be applied at a fixed position given by the maximum streamwise rms fluctuation
of the function |u|. The deformation of this function may lead to jumps in value of
location. We, thus, prefer an integral norm. For defining α in the domain Θ, we use

where the dagger denotes the complex conjugate. We now choose

to normalize q.

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The stability equation derived above along with one of the conditions given above, or any
suitable norm are the closed system of parabolized stability equations (PSE). This system
permits the simultaneous calculation of α(x) and q(x,y) in a streamwise marching
procedure.
Different norms lead to different partitions of the solution q’. The physical
solution q’, however, is the same to within small effects of the norm on the PSE
approximation.

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• Solution Procedure
Before solving the PSE, we need to specify initial and boundary conditions as follows:
• specify Re, β, Ω and V,
• provide the same estimates α0 for the eigenvalue and q0 for the eigenfunction as initial
conditions at xs, and
• apply the homogeneous boundary conditions.
To solve the PSE, the differential operators and boundary conditions are
converted into algebraic form by any method suitable for the Orr-Sommerfeld problem.
We use a spectral collocation method with Chebyshev polynomials, together with a domain
transformation.
Since α appears in the differential operators, the system is nonlinear, and a
predictor-corrector approach is employed to find the solution at α j+1 (j is the step-index).

where n is the iteration count.

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We exploit the following equation to obtain an updated wavenumber

The integration-update cycle is continued until

• the norm is satisfied within a given error limit, and
• the solution has converged to αj+1, qj+1(y).
We then proceed to the next step in x where a better estimate for α and αx is known.
The marching procedure terminates if the convergence criterion is not satisfied
within a given number of iterations.

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• PSE as compared to DNS
• The Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) method analyses the transition process for
idealized problems of linear stability theory.
• The DNS solution is not yet feasible as an engineering method due to the enormous
computational costs.
• Thus, this constrains the transition simulations in boundary layers to a few runs.
• However, PSE takes advantage of more efficient methods available for solving
differential equations with marching procedures.
The efficiency of this approach and the good agreement of PSE and DNS solutions
encourage its further development as a tool for transition analysis and prediction.

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From the figure, we find perfect agreement between the PSE and DNS.

Fig Amplitude growth curves. Comparison of PSE and DNS.

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Work Ahead
• The code for evaluating the most unstable mode of disturbance is being developed to
obtain the coefficient matrices for the PSE equations.
• The axisymmetric flow over a cylinder is to be analysed.
• The growth curve for different modes of disturbances and their streamwise evolution
is to be evaluated for laminar to turbulent transition.

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 Conclusion
• The parabolized stability equations have developed into a mature
approach to analyse the receptivity, linear, and nonlinear stability of
convectively unstable flows into the late stages of transition.
• The applications of the PSE approach for transition analysis in
aerodynamic flows aim towards disturbance environment and location
of the transition point based on the nonlinear changes in skin friction.
• The methods discussed here in the report will be useful in better
documentation of the disturbance environment.

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 References
[1] Michael S. Broadhurst and Spencer J. Sherwin. The parabolised stability equations for 3d-
flows: Implementation and numerical stability. Applied Numerical Mathematics, 58:1017-1029,
2008.
[2] Thorwald Herbert. Parabolized stability equations. Special Course on Progress in
Transition Modelling, AGARD REPORT 793:4/1-34, 1994.
[3] Thorwald Herbert. Parabolized stability equations. Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics,
29:245-283, 1997.
[4] Fei Li and Mujeeb R. Malik. Spectral analysis of parabolized stability equations. Computers &
Fluids, Vol. 26:pp. 279-297, 1997.
[5] S.S. Motsa and P. Sibanda. On the Chebyshev Spectral Collocation method in channel and jet
flows. Journal of Pure Applied Mathematics, 1(1):36-47, 2001.
[6] Helen L. Reed. Parabolized stability equations: 2-d flows. NATO, RTO-EN-AVT-151:4/1-
26.
[7] Vassilios Theofilis. Advances in global linear instability analysis of nonparallel and three-
dimensional flows. Progress in Aerospace Sciences, 39:249-315, 2003.

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