Universal continuous transition to turbulence in a planar shear flow

Matthew Chantry , Laurette S. Tuckerman (1) , Dwight Barkley

1 PMMH - Physique et mécanique des milieux hétérogenes (UMR 7636)

We examine the onset of turbulence in Waleffe flow -- the planar shear flow between stress-free boundaries driven by a sinusoidal body force. By truncating the wall-normal representation to four modes, we are able to simulate system sizes an order of magnitude larger than any previously simulated, and thereby to attack the question of universality for a planar shear flow. We demonstrate that the equilibrium turbulence fraction increases continuously from zero above a critical Reynolds number and that statistics of the turbulent structures exhibit the power-law scalings of the (2+1)D directed percolation universality class.

Mots clés: dissemin

Domaines: Physique [physics]

Matthew Chantry, Laurette S. Tuckerman, Dwight Barkley. Universal continuous transition to turbulence in a planar shear flow. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 2017, 824, ⟨10.1017/jfm.2017.405⟩. ⟨hal-01621816⟩