Tertiary and quaternary solutions for plane Couette flow

The plane Couette system does not exhibit any secondary solutions bifurcating from the primary solution of constant shear. Since the work of Nagata (1990) it has been well known that three-dimensional steady solutions exist. Here the manifold of those steady solutions is explored in the parameter space of the problem and their instabilities are investigated. These instabilities usually lead to time-periodic solutions whose properties do not differ much from those of the steady solutions except that the amplitude varies in time. In some cases travelling wave solutions which are asymmetric with respect to the midplane of the layer are found as quaternary states of flow. Similarities with longitudinal vortices recently observed in experiments are discussed.