Modulational stability of cellular flows

Abstract

We present here the homogenization of the equations for the initial modulational (large-scale) perturbations of stationary solutions of the two-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations with a time-independent periodic rapidly oscillating forcing. The stationary solutions are cellular flows and they are determined by the stream function phi = sinx1/epsilonsinx2/epsilon+δ cosx1/epsiloncosx2/epsilon, 0 ≤ δ ≤ 1. Two results are given here. For any Reynolds number we prove the homogenization of the linearized equations. For small Reynolds number we prove the homogenization for the fully nonlinear problem. These results show that the modulational stability of cellular flows is determined by the stability of the effective (homogenized) equations.