Turbulence

Content

• Big whorls, little whorls

  An excursion into ecology and two sets of experiments lay the foundation for our Focus on Turbulence.

  Editorial1 Mar 2016 Nature Physics
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  The long and winding road

  For a problem as complex as turbulence, combining universal concepts from statistical physics with ideas from fluid mechanics has proven indispensable. Three decades since this link was formed, it is still providing food for new thought.

  • Yves Pomeau

  Commentary1 Mar 2016 Nature Physics
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  In pursuit of turbulence

  In the transition from laminar to turbulent pipe flow, puffs of turbulence form, split and decay. The phenomenology and lifetime of these turbulent puffs exhibit population dynamics that also drive predator–prey ecosystems on the edge of extinction.

  • Johannes Knebel
  • Markus F. Weber
  • Erwin Frey

  News & Views1 Mar 2016 Nature Physics
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  Ecological collapse and the emergence of travelling waves at the onset of shear turbulence

  Simulated pipe flow is interpreted using an ecological model in which predatory zonal flow preys on turbulence, and laminar flows emulate nutrients — establishing a link between turbulence and the directed percolation universality class.

  • Hong-Yan Shih
  • Tsung-Lin Hsieh
  • Nigel Goldenfeld

  Letter16 Nov 2015 Nature Physics
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  A universal transition to turbulence in channel flow

  Experiments and simulations of the transition to turbulence in fluid flow through a quasi-2D channel reveal critical exponents consistent with directed percolation — long conjectured to be the universality class associated with the transition.

  • Masaki Sano
  • Keiichi Tamai

  Letter15 Feb 2016 Nature Physics
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  Directed percolation phase transition to sustained turbulence in Couette flow

  Decades-old speculation that the transition to turbulence belongs to the directed percolation universality class is confirmed with experimental and numerical data for flow through a quasi-one-dimensional Couette geometry.

  • Grégoire Lemoult
  • Liang Shi
  • Björn Hof

  Letter15 Feb 2016 Nature Physics