Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2006
The effect of tube elasticity on the stability of Poiseuille flow to infinitesimal axisymmetric disturbances is investigated. The disturbance equations for the fluid are solved numerically while those for the arbitrarily thick tube are solved analytically in terms of Bessel functions of complex argument. It is shown that an elastic tube can cause instability of Poiseuille flow, unlike a rigid tube, in which the flow is always stable. Neutral curves are presented for various values of the tube parameters. It is found that the critical Reynolds number varies almost as the square root of the Young's modulus of the tube material while the critical dimensionless frequency is almost invariant, being about 1·1 for the cases studied.