Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

In this talk, we start with the mathematical modeling of air-water interaction in the framework of the interface problem between two incompressible inviscid fluids under the influence of gravity/surface tension. This is a nonlinear PDE system involving free boundary. It is generally accepted that wind generates surface waves due to the instability of shear flows in this context. Based on the linearized equations about shear flow solutions, we will discuss the classical Kelvin--Helmholtz instability etc. before we illustrate Miles' critical layer theory.