Abstract
Hydrodynamic stability theory has recently seen a great deal of development. After being dominated by modal (eigenvalue) analysis for many decades, a different perspective has emerged that allows the quantitative description of short-term disturbance behavior. A general formulation based on the linear initial-value problem, thus circumventing the normal-mode approach, yields an efficient framework for stability calculations that is easily extendable to incorporate time-dependent flows, spatially varying configurations, stochastic influences, nonlinear effects, and flows in complex geometries. Copyright © 2007 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved.