Coexisting laminar and turbulent regions have been observed in several types of wall bounded flows. In Taylor Couette flow, for example, alternating helical shaped laminar and turbulent regions have been observed within a limited Reynolds number range (Prigent et al., 2002) and oblique laminar and turbulent bands have been seen in experiments (Prigent et al., 2002) and simulations (Barkley and Tuckerman, 2005), (Duguet et al., 2010) of plane Couette flow for Reynolds numbers Re=U w h/ν between about 320 and 380. Here ±U w is the velocity of the two walls, h is the half width of the wall gap and ν is the viscosity. In this Reynolds number range the turbulent-laminar patterns seem to sustain while at lower Re the flow becomes fully laminar and at higher Re no clear laminar patterns can be distinguished and the flow eventually becomes fully turbulent. Similar oblique laminar-turbulent bands appeared as well in direct numerical simulations (DNS) of plane channel flow for friction Reynolds numbers Re τ =u τ h/ν=60 and 80 (Fukudome et al., 2009), (Tsukahara, 2010), where u τ is the friction velocity and h is again the gap half width.
For parallel shear flows, transition to turbulence occurs only for perturbations of sufficiently large amplitude. It is therefore relevant to study the shape, amplitude, and dynamics of the least energetic initial disturbances leading to transition. We suggest a numerical approach to find such minimal perturbations, applied here to the case of plane Couette flow. The optimization method seeks such perturbations at initial time as a linear combination of a finite number of linear optimal modes. The energy threshold of the minimal perturbation for a Reynolds number Re=400 is only 2% less than for a pair of symmetric oblique waves. The associated transition scenario shows a long transient approach to a steady state solution with special symmetries. Modal analysis shows how the oblique-wave mechanism can be optimized by the addition of other oblique modes breaking the flow symmetry and whose nonlinear interaction generates spectral components of the edge state. The Re dependence of energy thresholds is revisited, with evidence for a O(Re(-2))-scaling for both oblique waves and streamwise vortices scenarios.
A dynamical system description of the transition process in shear flows with no linear instability starts with knowledge of exact coherent solutions, among them traveling waves (TWs) and relative periodic orbits (RPOs). We describe a numerical method to find such solutions in pipe flow and apply it in the vicinity of a Hopf bifurcation from a TW which looks to be especially relevant for transition. The dominant structural feature of the RPO solution is the presence of weakly modulated streaks. This RPO, like the TW from which it bifurcates, sits on the laminar-turbulent boundary separating initial conditions which lead to turbulence from those which immediately relaminarize.
The formation of turbulent patterns in plane Couette flow is investigated near the onset of transition, using numerical simulation in a very large domain of size 800 h x 2h x 356 h. Based on a maximum observation time of 20 000 inertial units, the threshold for the appearance of sustained turbulent motion is Re-c = 324 +/- 1. For Re-c < Re <= 380, turbulent-banded patterns form, irrespective of whether the initial perturbation is a noise or localized disturbance. Measurements of the turbulent fraction versus Re show evidence for a discontinuous phase transition scenario where turbulent spots play the role of the nuclei. Using a smaller computational box, the angle selection of the turbulent bands in the early stages of their development is shown to be related to the amplitude of the initial perturbation.
Plane Couette flow is a classical prototype of a shear flow where transition toturbulence is subcritical, i.e. happens despite linear stability of the base flow. In this studywe are interested in the spatio-temporal competition between the (active) turbulent phase andthe (absorbing) laminar. Our three-dimensional numerical simulations show that the delimitinginterface, when parallel to the streamwise direction, moves in a stochastic manner which wemodel as a continuous-time random walk. Statistical analysis suggests a Gaussian diffusionprocess and allows us to determine the average speed of this interface as a function of theReynolds number Re, as well as the threshold in Re above which turbulence contaminatesthe whole domain. For the lowest value of Re, this stochastic motion competes with anotherdeterministic regime of growth of the localised perturbations. The latter, a rather unexpectedregime, is shown to be linked to the recently found localised snaking solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. An extension of this thinking to more general orientations of the interfaceswill be proposed.
The dynamics at the threshold of transition in plane Couette flow is Investigated numerically in a large spatial domain for a certain type of localized initial perturbation, for Re between 350 and 1000 The corresponding edge state is all unsteady spotlike Structure, localized in both streamwise and spanwise directions, which neither grows nor decays in size. We show that the localized nature of the edge state is numerically robust. and IS not Influenced by the size of the computational domain The edge trajectory appeals to transiently visit localized steady states This suggests that basic spatiotemporally intermittent features of transition to turbulence. such as the growth Of it turbulent spot, call be described as a dynamical system.
We present for the first time a complete bifurcation diagram of plane Couette flow based on direct numerical simulation of the full Navier-Stokes equations. The use of an unusually large computational domain (800h x 2h x 356h) is crucial for the determination of transition thresholds, because it allows to reproduce spatio-temporal intermittency structures such as transient spots, turbulent bands, and laminar holes. The threshold in Re (based on the half-gap) is found to he Re-c = 324 +/- 1 in very good agreement with available experimental data. This work points out that, at the onset of transition in Re, fragmented oblique patterns always emerge from the interaction of growing neighbouring spots. An analogy with thermodynamical phase transition seems relevant to describe the whole transition process.
Transition to uniform turbulence in cylindrical pipe flow occurs experimentally via the spatial expansion of isolated coherent structures called 'slugs', triggered by localized finite-amplitude disturbances. We study this process numerically by examining the preferred route in phase space through which a critical disturbance initiates a 'slug'. This entails first identifying the relative attractor - 'edge state' - on the laminar-turbulent boundary in a long pipe and then studying the dynamics along its low-dimensional unstable manifold, leading to the turbulent state. Even though the fully turbulent state delocalizes at Re approximate to 2300, the edge state is found to be localized over the range Re = 2000-6000, and progressively reduces in both energy and spatial extent as Re is increased. A key process in the genesis of a slug is found to be vortex shedding via a Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism from wall-attached shear layers quickly formed at the edge state's upstream boundary. Whether these shedded vortices travel on average faster or slower downstream than the developing turbulence determines whether a puff or a slug (respectively) is formed. This observation suggests that slugs are out-of-equilibrium puffs which therefore do not co-exist with stable puffs.
The laminar-turbulent boundary Sigma is the set separating initial conditions which relaminarize uneventfully from those which become turbulent. Phase space trajectories on this hypersurface in cylindrical pipe flow appear to be chaotic and show recurring evidence of coherent structures. A general numerical technique is developed for recognizing approaches to these structures and then for identifying the exact coherent solutions themselves. Numerical evidence is presented which suggests that trajectories on Sigma are organized around only a few travelling waves and their heteroclinic connections. If the flow is suitably constrained to a subspace with a discrete rotational symmetry, it is possible to find locally attracting travelling waves embedded within Sigma. Four new types of travelling waves were found using this approach.
The recent theoretical discovery of finite-amplitude travelling waves (TWs) in pipe flow has reignited interest in the transitional phenomena that Osborne Reynolds studied 125 years ago. Despite all being unstable, these waves are providing fresh insight into the flow dynamics. We describe two new classes of TWs, which, while possessing more restrictive symmetries than previously found TWs of Faisst & Eckhardt (2003 Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 224502) and Wedin & Kerswell (2004 J. Fluid Mech. 508, 333 371), seem to be more fundamental to the hierarchy of exact solutions. They exhibit much higher wall shear stresses and appear at notably lower Reynolds numbers. The first M-class comprises the various discrete rotationally symmetric analogues of the mirror-symmetric wave found in Pringle & Kerswell (2007 Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 074502), and have a distinctive double-layered structure of fast and slow streaks across the pipe radius. The second N-class has the more familiar separation of fast streaks to the exterior and slow streaks to the interior and looks like the precursor to the class of non-mirror-symmetric waves already known.