Laboratory and theoretical models of plane periodic flow

In the present paper, the plane periodic flow of an electrolyte in an MHD channel is studied experimentally and on the basis of analytical models. It is shown that a three-mode model of plane periodic flow, developed by Bondarenko and Gak (1978) provides good qualitative, but not quantitative, agreement with the experiment. Furthermore, the experiments reveal an invariance of the longitudinal wave number of secondary flow with respect to the channel length, which contradicts Iudovich's (1966) linear stability theory of primary flow. In view of these discrepancies, an improved model is proposed which makes allowance for base friction and is in quantitative agreement with the experiment.