Subcritical transition to turbulence of a precessing flow in a cylindrical vessel

Abstract

The transition to turbulence in a precessing cylindrical vessel is experimentally investigated. Our measurements are performed for a { nearly-resonant} configuration with an initially laminar flow dominated by an inertial mode with azimuthal wave number $m=1$ superimposed on a solid body rotation. By increasing the precession ratio, we observe a transition from the laminar to a non-linear regime, which then breakdowns to turbulence for larger precession ratio. Our measurements show that the transition to turbulence is subcritical, with a discontinuity of the wall-pressure and the power consumption at the threshold ${\epsilon }_{LT}$. The turbulence is self-sustained below this threshold, describing a bifurcation diagram with a hysteresis. In this range of the control parameters, the turbulent flows can suddenly collapse after a finite duration, leading to a definitive relaminarization of the flow. The average lifetime $⟨\tau ⟩$ of the turbulence increases rapidly when $\epsilon$ tends to ${\epsilon }_{LT}$.

25 pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Experimental study of fluid flows in a precessing cylindrical annulus
• Subcritical dynamo bifurcation in the Taylor Green flow

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Nonlinear large scale flow in a precessing cylinder and its ability to drive dynamo action
• Kinematic dynamo action of a precession driven flow based on the results of water experiments and hydrodynamic simulations
• Interplay between geostrophic vortices and inertial waves in precession-driven turbulence
• The effect of nutation angle on the flow inside a precessing cylinder and its dynamo action
• Instability of precession driven Kelvin modes: Evidence of a detuning effect
• The global flow state in a precessing cylinder
• Magnetic field dynamos and magnetically triggered flow instabilities
• Parametric instability in periodically perturbed dynamos
• Modulated rotating waves and triadic resonances in spherical fluid systems: The case of magnetized spherical Couette flow