The Galerkin method is used to derive a realistic model of plane Couette flow
in terms of partial differential equations governing the space-time dependence
of the amplitude of a few cross-stream modes. Numerical simulations show that
it reproduces the globally sub-critical behavior typical of this flow. In
particular, the statistics of turbulent transients at decay from turbulent to
laminar flow displays striking similarities with experimental findings.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure