The role of microscopic fluctuations in transition prediction

2008/04/13 by Paolo Luchini, Luchini, Paolo
Engineering · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Phase Equilibria and Thermodynamics #Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics #physics.flu-dyn

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0804.2067

arxiv created 2008/04/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01

Abstract

The commonly accepted description of transition to turbulence in shear flows requires the presence of an external source of disturbances that get amplified by an essentially linear mechanism up to the point where breakdown to turbulence occurs. Microscopic fluctuations are shown here to provide just the right amount of initial disturbances to match the predictions of linear stability theory.

Related

• Universality at the onset of turbulence in shear flows
• Probabilistic thresholds of turbulence decay in transitional shear flows
• Direct and noisy transitions in a model shear flow
• The transition to turbulence in parallel flows: transition to turbulence or to regular structures
• Discontinuous transition to shear flow turbulence