Stochastic and deterministic motion of a laminar-turbulent front in a spanwisely extended Couette flow

Duguet Y, Le Maitre O, Schlatter P (2011)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2011

Journal

Physical Review E American Physical Society

Book Volume: 84

Article Number: 066315

Journal Issue: 6

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.84.066315

Abstract

We investigate numerically the dynamics of a laminar-turbulent interface in a spanwisely extended and streamwisely minimal plane Couette flow. The chosen geometry allows one to suppress the large-scale secondary flow and to focus on the nucleation of streaks near the interface. It is shown that the resulting spanwise motion of the interface is essentially stochastic and can be modeled as a continuous-time random walk. This model corresponds here to a Gaussian diffusion process. The average speed of the interface and the corresponding diffusion coefficient are determined as functions of the Reynolds number Re, as well as the threshold value above which turbulence contaminates the whole domain. For the lowest values of Re, the stochastic dynamics competes with another deterministic regime of growth of the localized perturbations. The latter is interpreted as a depinning process from the homoclinic snaking region of the system. © 2011 American Physical Society.

Authors with CRIS profile

Philipp Schlatter

Involved external institutions

University of Paris 11 - Paris-Sud / Université Paris XI Paris-Sud

France (FR) Royal Institute of Technology / Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH)

Sweden (SE)

How to cite

APA:

Duguet, Y., Le Maitre, O., & Schlatter, P. (2011). Stochastic and deterministic motion of a laminar-turbulent front in a spanwisely extended Couette flow. Physical Review E, 84(6). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.84.066315

MLA:

Duguet, Yohann, Olivier Le Maitre, and Philipp Schlatter. "Stochastic and deterministic motion of a laminar-turbulent front in a spanwisely extended Couette flow." Physical Review E 84.6 (2011).

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