Convective instability emerges in symmetric structural-acoustic modes above critical Mach number in elastic-plate channel flow
A Fredholm solvability analysis yields an exact Mach correction and identifies a parity-protected convective instability in the symmetric mode of a two-plate channel. The instability is inviscid, wall-compliance dependent, and confirmed numerically to high precision. It offers a new probe of critical-layer dynamics distinct from classical shear-flow instabilities.
The work connects to aeroelastic and structural-acoustic applications in ducts and aircraft fuselages where compliant boundaries and low-Mach shear flows coexist. It supplies an exact benchmark that can test future reduced-order models of critical-layer absorption and energy transfer in compliant-wall turbulence.
Saxena et al.: Laboratory water-table or low-Mach air-channel experiments will measure symmetric-mode growth rates within 10% of the predicted compliance scaling by 2028.
Sources (2)
- [1]Primary Source(https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.10798)
- [2]Supporting Source(https://journals.aps.org/prfluids/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.8.123901)