The Convective Instability of the Boundary-Layer Flow over Families of Rotating Spheroids

The majority of this work is concerned with the local-linear convective instability analysis of the incompressible boundary-layer flows over prolate spheroids and oblate spheroids rotating in otherwise still fluid. The laminar boundary layer and the perturbation equations have been formulated by introducing two distinct orthogonal coordinate systems. A cross-sectional eccentricity parameter e is introduced to identify each spheroid within its family. Both systems of equations reduce exactly to those already established for the rotating sphere boundary layer. The effects of viscosity and streamline-curvature are included in each analysis. We predict that for prolate spheroids at low to moderate latitudes, increasing eccentricity has a strong stabilizing effect. However, at high latitudes of ϴ ≥ 60, increasing eccentricity is seen to have a destabilizing effect. For oblate spheroids, increasing eccentricity has a stabilizing effect at all latitudes. Near the pole of both types of spheroids, the critical Reynolds numbers approach that for the rotating disk boundary layer. However, in prolate spheroid case near the pole for very large values of e, the critical Reynolds numbers exceed that for the rotating disk. We show that high curvature near the pole of prolate spheroids is responsible for the increase in critical Reynolds number with increasing eccentricity. For both types of spheroids at moderate eccentricity, we predict that the most amplified modes travel at approximately 76% of the surface speed at all latitudes. This is consistent with the existing studies of boundary-layer flows over the related rotating-disk, -sphere and -cone geometries. However, for large values of eccentricity, the traveling speed of the most amplified modes increases up to approximately 90% of the surface speed of oblate spheroids and up to 100% in the prolate spheroid case.