Universal continuous transition to turbulence in a planar shear flow. (4th July 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chantry, Matthew; Tuckerman, Laurette S.; Barkley, Dwight
• Is Part Of: Journal of fluid mechanics. Volume 824(2017)
• Publication Date: 2017-07-04
• Subjects: instability, -- transition to turbulence; Fluid mechanics -- Periodicals; 532.005
• DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2017.405
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-1120

Abstract

Abstract : 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.