Dynamical systems that mimic flow turbulence

Abstract

The relevance of recent developments in nonlinear dynamical systems towards understanding the onset of turbulence in open flows has often been questioned as the behaviour in all such systems studied to-date is fundamentally different in several respects from that of strong turbulence. In particular, such systems exhibit only slow chaos, which furthermore is not persistent as the control parameter is continuously varied beyond the value critical for onset of chaos. Based on physical considerations of the dynamics of interacting large and small eddies, we devise here a nonlinear system which mimics the strong, fast turbulence characteristic of open shear flows, revealing the possibility of establishing closer connections between dynamical chaos and turbulence.