130 research outputs found
Relative periodic orbits in transitional pipe flow
A dynamical system description of the transition process in shear flows with
no linear instability starts with a knowledge of exact coherent solutions,
among them travelling waves (TWs) and relative periodic orbits (RPOs). We
describe a numerical method to find such solutions in pipe flow and apply it in
the vicinity of a Hopf bifurcation from a TW which looks to be especially
relevant for transition. The dominant structural feature of the RPO solution is
the presence of weakly modulated streaks. This RPO, like the TW from which it
bifurcates, sits on the laminar-turbulent boundary separating initial
conditions which lead to turbulence from those which immediately relaminarise
Global bifurcations to subcritical magnetorotational dynamo action in Keplerian shear flow
Magnetorotational dynamo action in Keplerian shear flow is a three-dimensional, non-linear magnetohydrodynamic process whose study is relevant to the understanding of accretion processes and magnetic field generation in astrophysics. Transition to this form of dynamo action is subcritical and shares many characteristics of transition to turbulence in non-rotating hydrodynamic shear flows. This suggests that these different fluid systems become active through similar generic bifurcation mechanisms, which in both cases have eluded detailed understanding so far. In this paper, we build on recent work on the two problems to investigate numerically the bifurcation mechanisms at work in the incompressible Keplerian magnetorotational dynamo problem in the shearing box framework. Using numerical techniques imported from dynamical systems research, we show that the onset of chaotic dynamo action at magnetic Prandtl numbers larger than unity is primarily associated with global homoclinic and heteroclinic bifurcations of nonlinear magnetorotational dynamo cycles. These global bifurcations are found to be supplemented by local bifurcations of cycles marking the beginning of period-doubling cascades. The results suggest that nonlinear magnetorotational dynamo cycles provide the pathway to turbulent injection of both kinetic and magnetic energy in incompressible magnetohydrodynamic Keplerian shear flow in the absence of an externally imposed magnetic field. Studying the nonlinear physics and bifurcations of these cycles in different regimes and configurations may subsequently help to better understand the physical conditions of excitation of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence and instability-driven dynamos in a variety of astrophysical systems and laboratory experiments. The detailed characterization of global bifurcations provided for this three-dimensional subcritical fluid dynamics problem may also prove useful for the problem of transition to turbulence in hydrodynamic shear flows
Revealing the state space of turbulent pipe flow by symmetry reduction
Symmetry reduction by the method of slices is applied to pipe flow in order
to quotient the stream-wise translation and azimuthal rotation symmetries of
turbulent flow states. Within the symmetry-reduced state space, all travelling
wave solutions reduce to equilibria, and all relative periodic orbits reduce to
periodic orbits. Projections of these solutions and their unstable manifolds
from their -dimensional symmetry-reduced state space onto suitably
chosen 2- or 3-dimensional subspaces reveal their interrelations and the role
they play in organising turbulence in wall-bounded shear flows. Visualisations
of the flow within the slice and its linearisation at equilibria enable us to
trace out the unstable manifolds, determine close recurrences, identify
connections between different travelling wave solutions, and find, for the
first time for pipe flows, relative periodic orbits that are embedded within
the chaotic attractor, which capture turbulent dynamics at transitional
Reynolds numbers.Comment: 24 pages, 12 figure
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