SEMINAR: Mathematics & Statistics Colloquium: Grrrrr...... linear stability should be simple -- the saga of the Stokes' layer

Mathematics & Statistics Colloquium

Time and date: 4pm, Thursday 19th November

Venue: Blakers Lecture Theatre

Speaker: Professor Andrew Bassom (The University of Western Australia)

Title: Grrrrr...... linear stability should be simple -- the saga of the Stokes' layer

Abstract: The linear stability of boundary layers is a subject which was thought to have been essentially solved long ago. During my interview at UWA over 12 years ago I talked about some calculations directed towards understanding the stability properties of a Stokes layer, which is the fluid flow set up when an oscillatory viscous flow moves over a rigid boundary. Those computations gave results very different from experimental observations and it is only relatively recently that we believe we have found a plausible explanation for the discrepancy. Here I shall review a number of the various frustrations experienced in the research into this ostensibly straightforward problem (and conclude that I should have given up long ago).