A Convex Approach to Hydrodynamic Analysis

We study stability and input-state analysis of three dimensional (3D) incompressible, viscous flows with invariance in one direction. By taking advantage of this invariance property, we propose a class of Lyapunov and storage functionals. We then consider exponential stability, induced L2-norms, and input-to-state stability (ISS). For streamwise constant flows, we formulate conditions based on matrix inequalities. We show that in the case of polynomial laminar flow profiles the matrix inequalities can be checked via convex optimization. The proposed method is illustrated by an example of rotating Couette flow.