List of hydrodynamic instabilities - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

This is a list of hydrodynamic and plasma instabilities named after people (eponymous instabilities).

Instability	Field	Person(s) Named After
Bénard instability	Natural convection, Rayleigh-Bénard convection	Henri Bénard Henri Bénard Henri Bénard, , French physicist, best known for his research on convection in liquids that now carries his name, Benard convection....
Crow instability Crow Instability In aerodynamics, the Crow Instability is an inviscid line-vortex instability, named after its discoverer S. C. Crow.The Crow instability is most commonly observed in the skies behind large aircraft, when the wingtip vortices interact with contrails from the engines, producing visible distortions in...	Aerodynamics	S. C. Crow
Buneman Oscar Buneman Oscar Buneman made advances in science, engineering, and mathematics. Buneman was a pioneer of computational plasma physics and plasma simulation.... instability	Plasma physics	Oscar Buneman Oscar Buneman Oscar Buneman made advances in science, engineering, and mathematics. Buneman was a pioneer of computational plasma physics and plasma simulation....
Cherenkov instability	Plasma physics	Pavel Alekseevič Čerenkov
Chromo-Weibel instability Chromo-Weibel instability The Chromo–Weibel instability is a plasma instability present in homogeneous or nearly homogeneous non-abelian plasmas which possess an anisotropy in momentum space...	Plasma physics	E. S. Weibel
Darrieus-Landau instability	Flame propagation	G. Darrieus and Lev Landau Lev Landau Lev Davidovich Landau was a prominent Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics...
Kelvin–Helmholtz instability	Interfacial flows	Lord Kelvin William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin OM, GCVO, PC, PRS, PRSE, was a mathematical physicist and engineer. At the University of Glasgow he did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging... and Hermann von Helmholtz Hermann von Helmholtz Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science...
Peratt instability	Plasma physics	Anthony Peratt
Plateau-Rayleigh instability Plateau-Rayleigh instability The Plateau–Rayleigh instability, often just called the Rayleigh instability, explains why and how a falling stream of fluid breaks up into smaller packets with the same volume but less surface area. It is related to the Rayleigh–Taylor instability...	Stability of jets and drops	Joseph Plateau and Lord Rayleigh John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, OM was an English physicist who, with William Ramsay, discovered the element argon, an achievement for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904...
Rayleigh–Taylor instability	Density-stratified flows, Astrophysics	Lord Rayleigh John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, OM was an English physicist who, with William Ramsay, discovered the element argon, an achievement for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904... and Geoffrey Ingram Taylor Geoffrey Ingram Taylor Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor OM was a British physicist, mathematician and expert on fluid dynamics and wave theory. His biographer and one-time student, George Batchelor, described him as "one of the most notable scientists of this century".-Biography:Taylor was born in St. John's Wood, London...
Richtmyer–Meshkov instability	Plasma physics, Astrophysics	R. D. Richtmyer Robert D. Richtmyer Robert Davis Richtmyer was an American physicist, mathematician, educator, author, and musician.-Biography:Richtmyer was born on October 10, 1910 in Ithaca, New York.His father was physicist Floyd K... and E. E. Meshkov
Saffman-Taylor instability	Flow in porous medium	Philip Saffman Philip Saffman Philip Geoffrey Saffman was an applied mathematician, the Theodore von Karman Professor of Applied Mathematics and Aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology.-Life, career and honors:... and Geoffrey Ingram Taylor Geoffrey Ingram Taylor Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor OM was a British physicist, mathematician and expert on fluid dynamics and wave theory. His biographer and one-time student, George Batchelor, described him as "one of the most notable scientists of this century".-Biography:Taylor was born in St. John's Wood, London...
Taylor-Couette instability Taylor–Couette flow In fluid dynamics, the Taylor–Couette flow consists of a viscous fluid confined in the gap between two rotating cylinders. For low angular velocities, measured by the Reynolds number Re, the flow is steady and purely azimuthal. This basic state is known as circular Couette flow, after Maurice...	Flow in rotating cylinder	Geoffrey Ingram Taylor Geoffrey Ingram Taylor Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor OM was a British physicist, mathematician and expert on fluid dynamics and wave theory. His biographer and one-time student, George Batchelor, described him as "one of the most notable scientists of this century".-Biography:Taylor was born in St. John's Wood, London... and Maurice Marie Alfred Couette
Velikhov instability Electrothermal instability The electrothermal instability is a magnetohydrodynamic instability appearing in magnetized non-thermal plasmas used in MHD converters...	Plasma physics (non-equilibrium MHD)	Evgeny Velikhov Evgeny Velikhov Evgeny Pavlovich Velikhov is a physicist and scientific leader in the Russian Federation. His scientific interests include plasma physics, lasers, controlled nuclear fusion, power engineering and magnetohydrodynamics...
Weibel instability Weibel instability The Weibel instability is a plasma instability present in homogeneous or nearly homogeneous electromagnetic plasmas which possess an anisotropy in momentum space. In other words, all the electrons are moving in one direction. In the linear limit the instability causes exponential growth of...	Plasma physics	E. S. Weibel

See also