Contributed by the Fluids Engineering Division for publication in the JOURNAL OF FLUIDS ENGINEERING. Manuscript received by the Fluids Engineering Division October 5, 2000; revised manuscript received March 27, 2001. Associate Editor: D. R. Williams.
A new theoretical treatment of the Taylor-Gortler instability of laminar boundary layers with streamline curvature is brought to the reader’s attention in the present note. It is well established that a boundary layer over a concave surface is unstable with respect to centrifugal instability, manifested by the presence of a spanwise vortex array consisting of evenly spaced counter-rotating vortices. One notices a plethora of theoretical analyses devoted to the problem while reviewing the literature (see, e.g., reviews by Floryan 1 and Saric 2). It was a concern about a disparity in the theoretical predictions that stimulated the study of Floryan and Saric 3. They elaborated a general approach to the problem by...
