Energy Transfer Analysis of Turbulent Plane Couette Flow

. An energy transfer analysis of turbulent plane Couette flow is performed. It is found that nonlinear interaction between the [0; \Sigma1] modes is principally responsible for maintaining the mean streamwise turbulent velocity profile. The [0; \Sigma1] modes extract energy from the laminar flow by linear non-modal growth mechanisms and transfer it directly to the mean flow mode. The connection of this work to linear/nonlinear models of transition is discussed. 1 Introduction In recent work a model for maintenance of turbulence in wall-bounded flows has been proposed [11,15]. It is argued that the backbone of the turbulent state is a quasi-periodic, self-sustaining cycle consisting of streak generation by linear advection, streak breakdown by a spanwise-inflectional instability, and vortex regeneration by nonlinear interaction of the products of the streak breakdown. This work was carried out by direct simulation of turbulent flow by reducing the size of the computational box to a mi..