Linear stability, transient energy growth, and the role of viscosity stratification in compressible plane Couette flow.

Linear stability and the nonmodal transient energy growth in compressible plane Couette flow are investigated for two prototype mean flows: (a) the uniform shear flow with constant viscosity, and (b) the nonuniform shear flow with stratified viscosity. Both mean flows are linearly unstable for a range of supersonic Mach numbers (M). For a given M , the critical Reynolds number (Re) is significantly smaller for the uniform shear flow than its nonuniform shear counterpart; for a given Re, the dominant instability (over all streamwise wave numbers, alpha ) of each mean flow belongs to different modes for a range of supersonic M . An analysis of perturbation energy reveals that the instability is primarily caused by an excess transfer of energy from mean flow to perturbations. It is shown that the energy transfer from mean flow occurs close to the moving top wall for "mode I" instability, whereas it occurs in the bulk of the flow domain for "mode II." For the nonmodal transient growth analysis, it is shown that the maximum temporal amplification of perturbation energy, G(max), and the corresponding time scale are significantly larger for the uniform shear case compared to those for its nonuniform counterpart. For alpha=0 , the linear stability operator can be partitioned into L ~ L+Re(2) L(p), and the Re-dependent operator L(p) is shown to have a negligibly small contribution to perturbation energy which is responsible for the validity of the well-known quadratic-scaling law in uniform shear flow: G(t/Re) ~ Re(2). In contrast, the dominance of L(p) is responsible for the invalidity of this scaling law in nonuniform shear flow. An inviscid reduced model, based on Ellingsen-Palm-type solution, has been shown to capture all salient features of transient energy growth of full viscous problem. For both modal and nonmodal instability, it is shown that the viscosity stratification of the underlying mean flow would lead to a delayed transition in compressible Couette flow.