Turbulent spot growth in plane Couette flow: statistical study and formation of spanwise vorticity

This article presents direct numerical simulations of the growth of turbulent spots in the transitional regime of plane Couette flow. A quantitative description of the growth process and of the detail of the quadrupolar flow around the spot is given. Focus is put on formation of spanwise vorticity in the velocity streaks that resembles a secondary shear instability. The main features of the instability (coherence lengths, advection velocity) are studied in the context of the turbulent spot, below and above the threshold Reynolds number of appearance of the oblique turbulent bands of plane Couette flow.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Stochastic analysis of the time evolution of Laminar-Turbulent bands of plane Couette flow

This article is concerned with the time evolution of the oblique laminar-turbulent bands of transitional plane Couette flow under the influence of turbulent noise. Our study is focused on the amplitude of modulation of turbulence. In order to guide the numerical study of the flow, we first perform an analytical and numerical analysis of a Stochastic Ginzburg-Landau equation for a complex order parameter. The modulus of this order parameter models the amplitude of modulation of turbulence. Firstly, we compute the autocorrelation function of said modulus once the band is established. Secondly, we perform a calculation of average and fluctuations around the exponential growth of the order parameter. This type of analysis is similar to the Stochastic Structural Stability Theory. We then perform numerical simulations of the Navier-Stokes equations in order to confront these predictions with the actual behaviour of the bands. Computation of the autocorrelation function of the modulation of turbulence shows quantitative agreement with the model: in the established band regime, the amplitude of modulation follows an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. In order to test the S3T predictions, we perform quench experiments, sudden decreases of the Reynolds number from uniform turbulence, in which modulation appears. We compute the average evolution of the amplitude of modulation and the fluctuations around it. We find good agreement between numerics and modeling. The average trajectory grows exponentially, at a rate clearly smaller than that of the formation of laminar holes. The actual time evolution remains in a flaring envelope, centred on the average, and expanding at the same rate. These results provide further validation of the stochastic modeling for the time evolution of the bands for further studies. They stress on the difference between the oblique band formation and the formation of laminar holes.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures. Followed by a Graphical abstract summarising the article. Accepted for publication in Eur. Phys. J E (last submitted version

On modelling transitional turbulent flows using under-resolved direct numerical simulations: The case of plane Couette flow

Direct numerical simulations have proven of inestimable help to our understanding of the transition to turbulence in wall-bounded flows. While the dynamics of the transition from laminar flow to turbulence via localised spots can be investigated with reasonable computing resources in domains of limited extent, the study of the decay of turbulence in conditions approaching those in the laboratory requires consideration of domains so wide as to exclude the recourse to fully resolved simulations. Using Gibson's C++ code ChannelFlow, we scrutinize the effects of a controlled lowering of the numerical resolution on the decay of turbulence in plane Couette flow at a quantitative level. We show that the number of Chebyshev polynomials describing the cross-stream dependence can be drastically decreased while preserving all the qualitative features of the solution. In particular, the oblique turbulent band regime experimentally observed in the upper part of the transitional range is extremely robust. In terms of Reynolds numbers, the resolution lowering is seen to yield a regular downward shift of the upper and lower thresholds Rt and Rg where the bands appear and break down. The study is illustrated with the results of two preliminary experiments.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures. Accepted on August 24, 2010, to appear in TCF

Formation of spanwise vorticy in oblique turbulent bands of transitional plane Couette flow, part 1: Numerical experiments

International audienceThis article investigates the formation of spanwise vorticity in the velocity streaks of the oblique laminar-turbulent bands of plane Couette flow (PCF) by mean of Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS). The spanwise vorticity is created by a roll–up type development of the streamwise-wall normal shear layer of the velocity streaks. It is advected by the large scale flow along the bands. We propose a criterion on spanwise vorticity which detects these events in order to perform systematic measurements. Beside of the streamwise and spanwise correlation lengths of the rolls, their advection velocity is measured and shown to match the large scale flow along the band near the turbulent region. Eventually, we discuss the possible relation between ejection of vorticity away from the bands near the laminar region and the size of said laminar region

Finite size analysis of a double crossover in transitional wall turbulence

This article presents the finite size analysis of two consecutive crossovers leading laminar-turbulent bands to uniform wall turbulence in transitional plane Couette flow. Direct numerical simulations and low order modeling simulations of the flow are performed. The kinetic energy $E$ of the turbulent flow and the order parameter $M$, a measure of the spatially organised modulation of turbulence, are sampled and processed in view analytical results from the phenomenology of phase transitions. The first crossover concerns the loss of spatial organisation of turbulence in the flow. In the band phase, the order parameter $M$ decreases continuously with the Reynolds number $R$ toward a small value, while its response function $\chi_M$ displays a maximum at the crossover. In the uniform phase, the order parameter $M$ and its variance $\sigma$ decrease toward zero following mean field field scalings $M,\sigma \propto 1/\sqrt{L_xL_z(R-R_c)}$ as $R$ is increased. The kinetic energy $E$ is an affine function of $R$ except in a small range where a sharp increase is detected, which corresponds to the second crossover. In this range, spatial and temporal coexistence of the uniform turbulence phase and laminar-turbulent bands phase is observed. This sharp increase is concomitant with a maximum of the response function of the kinetic energy. The finite size analysis reveals that the jump does not steepen and that the maximum of response function of $E$ saturates as size is increased. The first crossover is formally identical to a critical phenomenon in condensed matter. The second crossover is in agreement with a first order phase transition smeared by finite noise. The analytical analysis of this phenomenon assuming a non interacting gas of fronts between domain of the two phases provides a scaling of the response function consistent with that of $E$.Comment: 39 pages, 9 figures. Accepted in J. Stat. Mec

Computing transition rates for the 1-D stochastic Ginzburg--Landau--Allen--Cahn equation for finite-amplitude noise with a rare event algorithm

In this paper we compute and analyse the transition rates and duration of reactive trajectories of the stochastic 1-D Allen-Cahn equations for both the Freidlin-Wentzell regime (weak noise or temperature limit) and finite-amplitude white noise, as well as for small and large domain. We demonstrate that extremely rare reactive trajectories corresponding to direct transitions between two metastable states are efficiently computed using an algorithm called adaptive multilevel splitting. This algorithm is dedicated to the computation of rare events and is able to provide ensembles of reactive trajectories in a very efficient way. In the small noise limit, our numerical results are in agreement with large-deviation predictions such as instanton-like solutions, mean first passages and escape probabilities. We show that the duration of reactive trajectories follows a Gumbel distribution like for one degree of freedom systems. Moreover, the mean duration growths logarithmically with the inverse temperature. The prefactor given by the potential curvature grows exponentially with size. The main novelty of our work is that we also perform an analysis of reactive trajectories for large noises and large domains. In this case, we show that the position of the reactive front is essentially a random walk. This time, the mean duration grows linearly with the inverse temperature and quadratically with the size. Using a phenomenological description of the system, we are able to calculate the transition rate, although the dynamics is described by neither Freidlin--Wentzell or Eyring--Kramers type of results. Numerical results confirm our analysis

Turbulent pattern formation in plane Couette flow: Modelling and investigation of mechanisms

International audienceIn the transitional range of Reynolds number, plane Couette flow exhibits oblique turbulent bands. We focus on a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability occurring in the intermediate area between turbulent and laminar flow. The instability is characterised by means of Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS): a short wavelength instability, localised and advected in the spanwise direction. The coherent background flow on which the instability develops is extracted from DNS data, and an analytical formulation for the background flow is proposed. Linear stability analysis is performed to investigate its main mechanisms and its convective or absolute nature, depending on the location in the flow. Both DNS and linear stability analysis indicate that the instability takes place in a confined area "inside" turbulent streaks. This proceeding sums up the results from an article in preparation (Rolland, 2011)