2002/11/01 by Laurette S. Tuckerman, Dwight Barkley
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Environmental Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Aeolian processes and effects #Bifurcation #Classical mechanics #Couette flow #Flow (mathematics) #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Geometry #Mathematics #Mechanics #Metastability #Nonlinear system #Optics #Physics #Plane (geometry) #Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics #Quantum mechanics #Reflection symmetry #Reynolds number #Symmetry (geometry) #Symmetry breaking #Taylor–Couette flow #Turbulence #Vortex #Wavelength #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s00162-002-0064-y
published as Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics 16, 91-97 (2002)
openalex publication_date 2002/11/01 · arxiv created 2003/12/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Perturbed plane Couette flow containing a thin spanwise-oriented ribbon undergoes a subcritical bifurcation at Re = 230 to a steady 3D state containing streamwise vortices. This bifurcation is followed by several others giving rise to a fascinating series of stable and unstable steady states of different symmetries and wavelengths. First, the backwards-bifurcating branch reverses direction and becomes stable near Re = 200. Then, the spanwise reflection symmetry is broken, leading to two asymmetric branches which are themselves destabilized at Re = 420. Above this Reynolds number, time evolution leads first to a metastable state whose spanwise wavelength is halved and then to complicated time-dependent behavior. These features are in agreement with experiments.