Global absolute and convective stability analysis of flow past a circular cylinder with symmetry conditions imposed along the centreline of the flow field is carried out. A stabilized finite element formulation is used to solve the eigenvalue problem resulting from the linearized perturbation equation. All the computations carried out are in two dimensions. It is found that, compared to the unrestricted flow, the symmetry conditions lead to a significant delay in the onset of absolute as well as convective instability. In addition, the onset of absolute instability is greatly affected by the location of the lateral boundaries and shows a non-monotonic variation. Unlike the unrestricted flow, which is associated with von Kármán vortex shedding, the flow with centreline symmetry becomes unstable via modes that are associated with low-frequency large-scale structures. These lead to expansion and contraction of the wake bubble and are similar in characteristics to the low-frequency oscillations reported earlier in the literature. A global linear convective stability analysis is utilized to find the most unstable modes for different speeds of the disturbance. Three kinds of convectively unstable modes are identified. The ones travelling at very low streamwise speed are associated with large-scale structures and relatively low frequency. Shear layer instability, with relatively smaller scale flow structures and higher frequency, is encountered for disturbances travelling at relatively larger speed. For low blockage a new type of instability is found. It travels at relatively high speed and resembles a swirling flow structure. As opposed to the absolute instability, the convective instability appears at much lower Re and its onset is affected very little by the location of the lateral boundaries. Analysis is also carried out for determining the convective stability of disturbances that travel in directions other than along the free stream. It is found that the most unstable disturbances are not necessarily the purely streamwise travelling ones. Disturbances that move purely in the cross-stream direction can also be convectively unstable. The results from the linear stability analysis are confirmed by carrying out direct time integration of the linearized disturbance equations. The disturbance field shows transient growth by several orders of magnitude confirming that such flows act as amplifiers. Direct time integration of the Navier–Stokes equation is carried out to track the time evolution of both the large-scale low-frequency oscillations and small-scale shear layer instabilities. The critical Re for the onset of convective instability is compared with earlier results from local analysis. Good agreement is found.

Global stability analysis of the flow past a cylinder is carried out to determine the critical Re for the onset of shear layer instability. To suppress the wake mode that leads to von Kármán vortex shedding, flow past one-half of the cylinder is studied. The linearized perturbation equations for an incompressible flow are written in a moving frame of reference that travels with the perturbation and solved using a stabilized finite element method. The critical Re for the onset of convective instability is found to be approximately 54. Excellent agreement is observed between the results from global stability analysis and direct time integration of linearized disturbance equations. The wake and shear layer modes for a full cylinder are compared. Results are also presented for stability analysis of the time-averaged flow.