The effect of Lagrangian chaos on locking bifurcations in shear flows

The effect of an externally imposed perturbation on an unstable or weakly stable shear flow is investigated, with a focus on the role of Lagrangian chaos in the bifurcations that occur. The external perturbation is at rest in the laboratory frame and can form a chain of resonances or cat's eyes where the initial velocity v(x0)(y) vanishes. If in addition the shear profile is unstable or weakly stable to a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, for a certain amplitude of the external perturbation there can be an unlocking bifurcation to a nonlinear wave resonant around a different value of y, with nonzero phase velocity. The interaction of the propagating nonlinear wave with the external perturbation leads to Lagrangian chaos. We discuss results based on numerical simulations for different amplitudes of the external perturbation. The response to the external perturbation is strong, apparently because of non-normality of the linear operator, and the unlocking bifurcation is hysteretic. The results indicate that the observed Lagrangian chaos is responsible for a second bifurcation occurring at larger external perturbation, locking the wave to the wall. This bifurcation is nonhysteretic. The mechanism by which the chaos leads to locking in this second bifurcation is by means of chaotic advective transport of momentum from one chain of resonances to the other (Reynolds stress) and momentum transport to the vicinity of the wall via chaotic scattering. These results suggest that locking of waves in rotating tank experiments in the presence of two unstable modes is due to a similar process. (c) 2002 American Institute of Physics.