Intermittency in the transition to turbulence

A. C. Fowler, P. D. Howell

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

It is commonly known that the intermittent transition from laminar to turbulent flow in pipes occurs because, at intermediate values of a prescribed pressure drop, a purely laminar flow offers too little resistance, but a fully turbulent one offers too much. We propose a phenomenological model of the flow, which is able to explain this in a quantitative way through a hysteretic transition between laminar and turbulent "states," characterized by a disturbance amplitude variable that satisfies a natural type of evolution equation. The form of this equation is motivated by physical observations and derived by an averaging procedure, and we show that it naturally predicts disturbances having the characteristics of slugs and puffs. The model predicts oscillations similar to those which occur in intermittency in pipe flow, but it also predicts that stationary "biphasic" states can occur in sufficiently short pipes.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1184-1207
Number of pages24
JournalSIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics
Volume63
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2003
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Intermittency
  • Puffs
  • Slugs
  • Transition
  • Turbulence

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