A well-posedness theory for the Prandtl equations in three space variables

Abstract

The well-posedness of the three space dimensional Prandtl equations is studied under some constraint on its flow structure. It reveals that the classical Burgers equation plays an important role in determining this type of flow with special structure, that avoids the appearance of the complicated secondary flow in the three-dimensional Prandtl boundary layers. And the sufficiency of the monotonicity condition on the tangential velocity field for the existence of solutions to the Prandtl boundary layer equations is illustrated in the three dimensional setting. Moreover, it is shown that this structured flow is linearly stable for any three-dimensional perturbation.