Absolute Instability of Incompressible Boundary Layer over a Compliant Plate

Abstract

An incompressible boundary layer on a compliant plate is considered. The influence exerted by the tensile stress and bending stiffness of the plate on the stability of the boundary layer is investigated in the limit of high Reynolds numbers on the basis of the triple-deck theory. It is shown that upstream-propagating growing waves can be generated in a certain range of parameters characterizing the plate properties. As a result, the flow becomes absolutely unstable in the conventional sense.