We investigate, by numerical simulation, the shear layer instability associated with the outer layer of a spiral vortex formed behind an impulsively started thin ellipse. The unstable free shear layer undergoes a secondary instability. We connect this instability with the dynamics of corner vortices adjacent to the tip of the ellipse by observing that the typical turnover time of the corner vortex matches the period of the unstable mode in the shear layer. We suggest that the corner vortex acts as a signal generator, and produces periodic perturbation which triggers the instability.

This paper is concerned with the Cauchy problem of the one-dimensional compressible Navier--Stokes equations with degenerate temperature dependent transport coefficients which satisfy conditions from the consideration in kinetic theory. A result on the existence and uniqueness of a globally smooth nonvacuum solution is obtained provided that the -norm of the initial perturbation) for some positive constant independent of . Here is the adiabatic gas constant. This is a Nishida--Smoller type global solvability result with large data.

We prove that the strong detonation travelling waves for a viscous combustion model are nonlinearly stable, that is, for a given perturbation of a travelling wave, the solution converges to a shifted travelling wave asymptotically as<i>t</i> . The rate of convergence is obtained. This work is a continuation of a previous work by done T.P. Liu and the first author in [7].

The multi-scale zero relaxation singular limit for gas dynamics in thermal non-equilibrium with multiple non-equilibrium modes in multi-dimensions with physical boundaries from non-equilibrium to thermal equilibrium of compressible Euler flow is proved in this paper for analytical data by establishing the uniform local-in-time estimates. A cancellation mechanism is utilized to deal with the nonlinear singular terms that cause the increase in both time and space derivatives in energy estimates. The rates of the relaxations corresponding to different non-equilibrium modes tending to zero discussed in this paper can be arbitrarily different.

There have been extensive studies on the large time behavior of solutions to systems on gas motions, such as the Navier-Stokes equations and the Boltzmann equation. Recently, an approach is introduced by combining the energy method and the spectral analysis to the study of the optimal rates of convergence to the asymptotic profiles. In this paper, we will first illustrate this method by using some simple model and then we will present some recent results on the Navier-Stokes equations and the Boltzmann equation. Precisely, we prove the stability of the non-trivial steady state for the Navier-Stokes equations with potential forces and also obtain the optimal rate of convergence of solutions toward the steady state. The same issue was also studied for the Boltzmann equation in the presence of the general time-space dependent forces. It is expected that this approach can also be applied to other dissipative