341 research outputs found
Transport of magnetic field by a turbulent flow of liquid sodium
We study the effect of a turbulent flow of liquid sodium generated in the von
K\'arm\'an geometry, on the localized field of a magnet placed close to the
frontier of the flow. We observe that the field can be transported by the flow
on distances larger than its integral length scale. In the most turbulent
configurations, the mean value of the field advected at large distance
vanishes. However, the rms value of the fluctuations increases linearly with
the magnetic Reynolds number. The advected field is strongly intermittent.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure
On the magnetic fields generated by experimental dynamos
We review the results obtained by three successful fluid dynamo experiments
and discuss what has been learnt from them about the effect of turbulence on
the dynamo threshold and saturation. We then discuss several questions that are
still open and propose experiments that could be performed to answer some of
them.Comment: 40 pages, 13 figure
Wave-vortex interaction
We present an experimental study on the effect of a electromagneticaly
generated vortex flow on parametrically amplified waves at the surface of a
fluid. The underlying vortex flow, generated by a periodic Lorentz force,
creates spatio-temporal fluctuations that interact nonlinearly with the
standing surface waves. We characterize the bifurcation diagram and measure the
power spectrum density (PSD) of the local surface wave amplitude. We show that
the parametric instability threshold increases with increasing intensity of the
vortex flow.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Existence and stability of singular patterns in a Ginzburg–Landau equation coupled with a mean field
We study singular patterns in a particular system of parabolic partial differential equations which consist of a Ginzburg–Landau equation and a mean field equation. We prove the existence of the three simplest concentrated periodic stationary patterns (single spikes, double spikes, double transition layers) by composing them of more elementary patterns and solving the corresponding consistency conditions. In the case of spike patterns we prove stability for sufficiently large spatial periods by first showing that the eigenvalues do not tend to zero as the period goes to infinity and then passing in the limit to a nonlocal eigenvalue problem which can be studied explicitly. For the two other patterns we show instability by using the variational characterization of eigenvalues
A quasi-elastic regime for vibrated granular gases
Using simple scaling arguments and two-dimensional numerical simulations of a
granular gas excited by vibrating one of the container boundaries, we study a
double limit of small and large , where is the restitution
coefficient and the size of the container. We show that if the particle
density and where is the particle diameter, are
kept constant and small enough, the granular temperature, i.e. the mean value
of the kinetic energy per particle, , tends to a constant whereas the
mean dissipated power per particle, , decreases like when
increases, provided that . The relative fluctuations
of , and the power injected by the moving boundary, , have simple
properties in that regime. In addition, the granular temperature can be
determined from the fluctuations of the power injected by the moving
boundary.
Capillary wave turbulence on a spherical fluid surface in low gravity
We report the observation of capillary wave turbulence on the surface of a
fluid layer in a low-gravity environment. In such conditions, the fluid covers
all the internal surface of the spherical container which is submitted to
random forcing. The surface wave amplitude displays power-law spectrum over two
decades in frequency, corresponding to wavelength from to a few . This
spectrum is found in roughly good agreement with wave turbulence theory. Such a
large scale observation without gravity waves has never been reached during
ground experiments. When the forcing is periodic, two-dimensional spherical
patterns are observed on the fluid surface such as subharmonic stripes or
hexagons with wavelength satisfying the capillary wave dispersion relation
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