Nonlinear development and secondary instability of Gortler vortices in hypersonic flows

In a hypersonic boundary layer over a wall of variable curvature, the region most susceptible to Goertler vortices is the temperature adjustment layer over which the basic state temperature decreases monotonically to its free stream value. Except for a special wall curvature distribution, the evolution of Goertler vortices trapped in the temperature adjustment layer will in general be strongly affected by the boundary layer growth through the O(M sup 3/2) curvature of the basic state, where M is the free stream Mach number. Only when the local wavenumber becomes as large as of order M sup 3/8, do nonparallel effects become negligible in the determination of stability properties. In the latter case, Goertler vortices will be trapped in a thin layer of O(epsilon sup 1/2) thickness which is embedded in the temperature adjustment layer; here epsilon is the inverse of the local wavenumber. A weakly nonlinear theory is presented in which the initial nonlinear development of Goertler vortices in the neighborhood of the neutral position is studied and two coupled evolution equations are derived. From these, it can be determined whether the vortices are decaying or growing depending on the sign of a constant which is related to wall curvature and the basic state temperature