Analysis of inviscid shear instability of axisymmetric flows

Simple analytical criteria are derived to determine whether axisymmetric base flows in annuli and pipes are stable or unstable. Both axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric inviscid disturbances are considered. Our sufficient condition for stability improves upon the classical result of Batchelor & Gill (1962) J. Fluid Mech . 14 (4), 529–551 following the idea of the second Kelvin–Arnol’d stability theorem. A novel sufficient condition for instability is also derived by extending the recently proposed hurdle theorem for parallel flows (Deguchi et al. 2024 J. Fluid Mech . 997 , A25). These analytical criteria are applied to annular and pipe model flows and are shown to effectively predict the neutral parameters obtained from eigenvalue computations of the stability problem.