2009/09/02 by Tobias M. Schneider, TM Schneider, Daniel Marinc +2 · 98 citations
Engineering · Environmental Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Classical mechanics #Climate variability and models #Couette flow #Flow (mathematics) #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Geometry #Laminar flow #Mathematics #Mechanics #Physics #Plane (geometry) #Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics #Turbulence #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0022112009993144
published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics 646, 441-451 (Cambridge University Press) · 15 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2009/09/02 · openalex publication_date 2010/03/08 · arxiv updated 2015/05/14 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the turbulence transition of plane Couette flow in large domains where localized perturbations are observed to generate growing turbulent spots. Extending previous studies on the boundary between laminar and turbulent dynamics we determine invariant structures intermediate between laminar and turbulent flow. In wide but short domains we find states that are localized in spanwise direction, and in wide and long domains the states are also localized in downstream direction. These localized states act as critical nuclei for the transition to turbulence in spatially extended domains.