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Register a new userTurbulent-laminar patterns in shear flows without walls
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Turbulent-laminar intermittency, typically in the form of bands and spots, is a ubiquitous feature of the route to turbulence in wall-bounded shear flows. Here we study the idealised shear between stress-free boundaries driven by a sinusoidal body force and demonstrate quantitative agreement between turbulence in this flow and that found in the interior of plane Couette flow -- the region excluding the boundary layers. Exploiting the absence of boundary layers, we construct a model flow that uses only four Fourier modes in the shear direction and yet robustly captures the range of spatiotemporal phenomena observed in transition, from spot growth to turbulent bands and uniform turbulence. The model substantially reduces the cost of simulating intermittent turbulent structures while maintaining the essential physics and a direct connection to the Navier-Stokes equations. We demonstrate the generic nature of this process by introducing stress-free equivalent flows for plane Poiseuille and pipe flows which again capture the turbulent-laminar structures seen in transition.
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On its way to turbulence, plane Couette flow - the flow between counter-translating parallel plates - displays a puzzling steady oblique laminar-turbulent pattern. We approach this problem via Galerkin modelling of the Navier-Stokes equations. The wall-normal dependence of the hydrodynamic field is treated by means of expansions on functional bases fitting the boundary conditions exactly. This yields a set of partial differential equations for the spatiotemporal dynamics in the plane of the flow. Truncating this set beyond lowest nontrivial order is numerically shown to produce the expected pattern, therefore improving over what was obtained at cruder effective wall-normal resolution. Perspectives opened by the approach are discussed.
Wall-bounded flows experience a transition to turbulence characterized by the coexistence of laminar and turbulent domains in some range of Reynolds number R, the natural control parameter. This transitional regime takes place between an upper threshold Rt above which turbulence is uniform (featureless) and a lower threshold Rg below which any form of turbulence decays, possibly at the end of overlong chaotic transients. The most emblematic cases of flow along flat plates transiting to/from turbulence according to this scenario are reviewed. The coexistence is generally in the form of bands, alternatively laminar and turbulent, and oriented obliquely with respect to the general flow direction. The final decay of the bands at Rg points to the relevance of directed percolation and criticality in the sense of statistical-physics phase transitions. The nature of the transition at Rt where bands form is still somewhat mysterious and does not easily fit the scheme holding for pattern-forming instabilities at increasing control parameter on a laminar background. In contrast, the bands arise at Rt out of a uniform turbulent background at a decreasing control parameter. Ingredients of a possible theory of laminar-turbulent patterning are discussed.
Plane Couette flow presents a regular oblique turbulent-laminar pattern over a wide range of Reynolds numbers R between the globally stable base flow profile at low R<R_g and a uniformly turbulent regime at sufficiently large R>R_t. The numerical simulations that we have performed on a pattern displaying a wavelength modulation show a relaxation of that modulation in agreement with what one would expect from a standard approach in terms of dissipative structures in extended geometry though the structuration develops on a turbulent background. Some consequences are discussed.
In linearly stable shear flows at moderate Re, turbulence spontaneously decays despite the existence of a codimension-one manifold, termed the edge of chaos, which separates decaying perturbations from those triggering turbulence. We statistically analyse the decay in plane Couette flow, quantify the breaking of self-sustaining feedback loops and demonstrate the existence of a whole continuum of possible decay paths. Drawing parallels with low-dimensional models and monitoring the location of the edge relative to decaying trajectories we provide evidence, that the edge of chaos separates state space not globally. It is instead wrapped around the turbulence generating structures and not an independent dynamical structure but part of the chaotic saddle. Thereby, decaying trajectories need not cross the edge, but circumnavigate it while unwrapping from the turbulent saddle.
The Lagrangian (LA) and Eulerian Acceleration (EA) properties of fluid particles in homogeneous turbulence with uniform shear and uniform stable stratification are studied using direct numerical simulations. The Richardson number is varied from $Ri=0$, corresponding to unstratified shear flow, to $Ri=1$, corresponding to strongly stratified shear flow. The probability density functions (pdfs) of both LA and EA have a stretched-exponential shape and they show a strong and similar influence on the Richardson number. The extreme values of the EA are stronger than those observed for the LA. Geometrical statistics explain that the magnitude of the EA is larger than its Lagrangian counterpart due to the mutual cancellation of the Eulerian and convective acceleration, as both vectors statistically show an anti-parallel preference. A wavelet-based scale-dependent decomposition of the LA and EA is performed. The tails of the acceleration pdfs grow heavier for smaller scales of turbulent motion. Hence the flatness increases with decreasing scale, indicating stronger intermittency at smaller scales. The joint pdfs of the LA and EA indicate a trend to stronger correlations with increasing Richardson number and at larger scales of the turbulent motion. A consideration of the terms in the Navier--Stokes equation shows that the LA is mainly determined by the pressure-gradient term, while the EA is dominated by the nonlinear convection term.
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