Global stability of separated flows: subsonic flow past corners

The triple-deck equations for the steady subsonic flow past a convex corner are solved numerically using a novel technique based on Chebychev collocation in the direction normal to the body combined with finite differences in the direction along the flow. The resulting set of nonlinear algebraic equations are solved with Newton linearization and using the GMRES method for the solution of the linear system of equations. The stability of the computed steady flows is then examined using global stability analysis. It is found that for small corner angles, the Tollmien–Schlichting modes are globally unstable and these persist to larger corner angles. Multiple steady state solutions also exist beyond a critical corner angle but these are globally unstable because of the presence of the Tollmien–Schlichting modes.