Transition and Turbulence (PDF)

Mathematics Research Center Symposia and Advanced Seminar Series: Transition and Turbulence covers the lectures presented at the Symposium on Transition and Turbulence in Fluids, held in Madison, Wisconsin on October 13-15, 1980 under the auspices of the Mathematics Research Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The book focuses on the relation between transition and turbulence in fluids and the importance of this relation for the understanding of many real fluid motions.

The selection first elaborates on transition in flow between rotating concentric cylinders, observations in the Taylor experiment, and transition to turbulence in thermal convection with and without rotation. Discussions focus on low aspect ratio convection layers, random convection in a rotating layer, unsteady flows at high Reynolds numbers, transition to oscillatory motion, and experimental observations. The text then tackles instability and turbulence in jets, instability and transition in pipes and channels, and transition to turbulence in boundary layers.

The book ponders on coherent structures in turbulence; interactions between large-scale coherent structures and fine-grained turbulence in free shear flows; and vortex interactions and coherent structures in turbulence. Topics include atomic and molecular representations, vortices in uniform strain, vortex pairs, numerical computations applied to a simple problem, agglomeration of large-scale structures and subharmonic formation, retrieving phase information, and dynamical equations.

The selection is highly recommended for researchers interested in pursuing further studies on transition and turbulence.