Dynamical-systems approach to localised turbulence in pipe flow

Paul Ritter, Fernando Mellibovsky, Marc Avila

Published 2015-12-08Version 1

Turbulent-laminar patterns are ubiquitous near transition in wall-bounded shear flows. Despite recent progress in describing their dynamics in analogy to nonequilibrium phase transitions, there is no theory explaining their emergence. Dynamical-system approaches suggest that invariant solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations, such as traveling waves and relative periodic orbits in pipe flow, act as building blocks of the disordered dynamics. While recent studies have shown how transient chaos arises from such solutions, the ensuing dynamics lacks the strong fluctuations in size, shape and speed of the turbulent spots observed in experiments. We here show that chaotic spots with distinct dynamical and kinematic properties merge in phase space and give rise to the enhanced spatiotemporal patterns observed in pipe flow. This paves the way for a dynamical-system foundation to the phenomenogloy of turbulent-laminar patterns in wall-bounded extended shear flows.