This book is an outgrowth of the NSF-CBMS conference Nonlinear Waves £3 Weak Turbulence held at Case Western Reserve University in May 1992. The principal speaker at the conference was Professor V. E. Zakharov who delivered a series of ten lectures outlining the historical and ongoing developments in the field. Some twenty other researchers also made presentations and it is their work which makes up the bulk of this text. Professor Zakharov's opening chapter serves as a general introduction to the other papers, which for the most part are concerned with the application of the theory in various fields. While the word "turbulence" is most often associated with f:l. uid dynamics it is in fact a dominant feature of most systems having a large or infinite number of degrees of freedom. For our purposes we might define turbulence as the chaotic behavior of systems having a large number of degrees of freedom and which are far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Work in field can be broadly divided into two areas: • The theory of the transition from smooth laminar motions to the disordered motions characteristic of turbulence. • Statistical studies of fully developed turbulent systems. In hydrodynamics, work on the transition question dates back to the end of the last century with pioneering contributions by Osborne Reynolds and Lord Rayleigh.

A rigorously comprehensive and interdisciplinary text on wave turbulence, for graduate students and researchers in physics-related fields.

Most fluid flows of practical importance are fully three-dimensional, so the non-linear instability properties of three-dimensional flows are of particular interest. In some cases the three-dimensionality may have been caused by a finite amplitude disturbance whilst, more usually, the unperturbed state is three-dimensional. Practical applications where transition is thought to be associated with non-linearity in a three- dimensional flow arise, for example, in aerodynamics (swept wings, engine nacelles, etc.), turbines and aortic blood flow. Here inviscid `cross-flow' disturbances as well as Tollmien-Schlichting and Görtler vortices can all occur simultaneously and their mutual non-linear behaviour must be understood if transition is to be predicted. The non-linear interactions are so complex that usually fully numerical or combined asymptotic/numerical methods must be used. Moreover, in view of the complexity of the instability processes, there is also a growing need for detailed and accurate experimental information. Carefully conducted tests allow us to identify those elements of a particular problem which are dominant. This assists in both the formulation of a relevant theoretical problem and the subsequent physical validation of predictions. It should be noted that the demands made upon the skills of the experimentalist are high and that the tests can be extremely sophisticated - often making use of the latest developments in flow diagnostic techniques, automated high speed data gathering, data analysis, fast processing and presentation.

The IUTAM Symposium on Nonlinear Instability of Nonparallel Flows was held at Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY 13699-5725, USA from 26 to 31 July 1993. It consisted of 9 general speeches, 35 lectures and 15 poster-seminar presentations. The papers were grouped in fairly focused sessions on boundary layers, shear flows, vortices, wakes, nonlinear waves and jets. The symposium was fol lowed by a workshop in which the subject matter discussed was sum marized and some further work for future investigation was recom mended. The highlights of the workshop will be reported elsewhere. In this book many of the papers that describe the ideas presented at the symposium are collected to provide a reference for researchers in charting the future course of their studies in the area of nonlinear instability of nonparallel flows. The papers in this book are grouped under the following headings: • Boundary layers and shear flows • Compressibility and thermal effects • Vortices and wakes • Nonlinear waves and jets In the lead paper ofthis book M. E. Goldstein describes an asymp totic theory of nonlinear interaction between two spatially growing oblique waves on nonparallel boundary and free-shear layers. The wave interaction originates from the nonlinear critical layer and is responsive to weakly nonparallel effects. The theory results in a sys tem of integral differential equations which appear to be relevant near the upper branch of the neutral curve.

This work, consisting of expository articles as well as research papers, highlights recent developments in nonlinear analysis and differential equations. The material is largely an outgrowth of autumn school courses and seminars held at the University of Lisbon and has been thoroughly refereed. Several topics in ordinary differential equations and partial differential equations are the focus of key articles, including: * periodic solutions of systems with p-Laplacian type operators (J. Mawhin) * bifurcation in variational inequalities (K. Schmitt) * a geometric approach to dynamical systems in the plane via twist theorems (R. Ortega) * asymptotic behavior and periodic solutions for Navier--Stokes equations (E. Feireisl) * mechanics on Riemannian manifolds (W. Oliva) * techniques of lower and upper solutions for ODEs (C. De Coster and P. Habets) A number of related subjects dealing with properties of solutions, e.g., bifurcations, symmetries, nonlinear oscillations, are treated in other articles. This volume reflects rich and varied fields of research and will be a useful resource for mathematicians and graduate students in the ODE and PDE community.

These two volumes contain the proceedings of the Workshop on Transition, Turbulence and Combustion, sponsored by the Insti tute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE) and the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC), during June 7 to July 2, 1993. Volume I contains the contributions from the transi tion research, and Volume II contains the contributions from both the turbulence and combustion research. This is the third workshop in the series on the subject. The first was held in 1989, the second in 1991, and their proceedings were published by Springer-Verlag under the titles "Instability and Transition" (edited by M. Y. Hussaini and R. G. Voigt) and "Instability, Transition and Turbulence" (edited by M. Y. Hussaini, A. Kumar and C. L. Streett) respectively. The objectives of these workshops are to expose the academic community to current technologically important issues of transition, turbulence and combustion, and to acquaint the academic commu nity with the unique combination of theoretical, computational and experimental capabilities at LaRC. It is hoped these will foster con tinued interactions, and accelerate progress in elucidating the funda mental phenomena of transition, turbulence and combustion. The research areas of interest in transition covered the full range of the subject: linear and nonlinear stability, direct and large-eddy simulation and phenomenological modeling of the transition zone.