Abstract: For the instability problem of density stratified shear flows in sea straits with variable cross sections, a new semielliptical instability region is found. Furthermore, the instability of the bounded shear layer is studied in two cases: (i) the density which takes two different constant values in two layers and (ii) the density which takes three different constant values in three layers. In both cases, the dispersion relation is found to be a quartic equation in the complex phase velocity. It is found that there are two unstable modes in a range of the wave numbers in the first case, whereas there is only one unstable mode in the second case.

Key words: variable density, hydrodynamic stability, variable cross section, shear flow, sea strait