Effects of shear-thinning/thickening nature on the stability of Couette-like flow with uniform crossflow

The linear stability of wall-injected pressuredriven Couette-like flow in power-law fluids is studied. Previous study on this kind of flow for Newtonian fluids by Nicoud and Angilella [Phys. Rev. E 56, 3000 (1997)] was extended to power-law fluids to understand the effects of shear-thinning/thickening nature on the flow stability. A related expression between the critical crossflow Reynolds number for Newtonian fluids and that for power-law fluids is obtained as the streamwise Reynolds number is large enough based on numerical computations, and verified theoretically in the case of a limiting condition with the power-law index.