Streamwise localization of traveling wave solutions in channel flow

Abstract

Channel flow of an incompressible fluid at Reynolds numbers above 2400 possesses a number of different spatially localized solutions that approach laminar flow far upstream and downstream. We use one such relative time-periodic solution, which corresponds to a spatially localized version of a Tollmien-Schlichting wave, to illustrate how the upstream and downstream asymptotics can be computed analytically. In particular, we show that for these spanwise uniform states the asymptotics predict the exponential localization that has been observed for numerically computed solutions of several canonical shear flows but never properly understood theoretically.