On the Problem of Steady Bifurcation of a Falling Sphere in a Navier-Stokes Liquid

Abstract

We study steady bifurcation for the coupled system body-liquid consisting of a sphere freely falling in a Navier-Stokes liquid under the action of gravity. In particular we show that, under the assumption that for the bifurcating solution the translational velocity of the sphere is parallel to the gravity, bifurcation takes place provided 1 is a simple eigenvalue of a suitable linear operator and the transversality property holds.