Instabilities of Flows and Transition to Turbulence

Title: Instabilities of Flows and Transition to Turbulence
Author: Tapan K. Sengupta
ISBN: 113807621X / 9781138076211
Format: Soft Cover
Pages: 528
Publisher: CRC Press
Year: 2018
Availability: 2 to 3 weeks

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Addressing classical material as well as new perspectives, Instabilities of Flows and Transition to Turbulence presents a concise, up-to-date treatment of theory and applications of viscous flow instability. It covers materials from classical instability to contemporary research areas including bluff body flow instability, mixed convection flows, and application areas of aerospace and other branches of engineering. Transforms and perturbation techniques are used to link linear instability with receptivity of flows, as developed by the author.

The book:

  • Provides complete coverage of transition concepts, including receptivity and flow instability
  • Introduces linear receptivity using bi-lateral Fourier-Laplace transform techniques
  • Presents natural laminar flow (NLF) airfoil analysis and design as a practical application of classical and bypass transition
  • Distinguishes strictly between instability and receptivity, which leads to identification of wall- and free stream-modes
  • Describes energy-based receptivity theory for the description of bypass transitions


Instabilities of Flows and Transition to Turbulence has evolved into an account of the personal research interests of the author over the years. A conscious effort has been made to keep the treatment at an elementary level requiring rudimentary knowledge of calculus, the Fourier-Laplace transform, and complex analysis. The book is equally amenable to undergraduate students, as well as researchers in the field.

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Chapter 1 : Introduction to Instability and Transition
Chapter 2 : Computing Transitional and Turbulent Flows
Chapter 3 : Instability and Transition in Flows
Chapter 4 : Bypass Transition: Theory, Computations and Experiments
Chapter 5 : Spatio-Temporal Wave Front and Transition
Chapter 6 : Nonlinear Effects: Multiple Hopf Bifurcations and Proper Orthogonal Decomposition
Chapter 7 : Stability and Transition of Mixed Convection Flows
Chapter 8 : Instabilities of Three-Dimensional Flows
Chapter 9 : Analysis and Design of Natural Laminar Flow Airfoils
Chapter 10 : Epilogue

Selected Problems
Bibliography and Index