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Published on: February 3, 2014
Chaotic motion in an oscillatory boundary layer
V. Mehta1, C. Thompson, A. Mulpur
1Center for Advanced Computation and Telecommunications and Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts 01854.
Abstract:
The chaotic time oscillations in an incompressible fluid driven into motion by a harmonic time-varying pressure gradient is examined. Special attention is given to centrifugal destabilization of the viscous boundary layer. The basic flow is shown to be linearly unstable. For increasing modulation amplitude, the flow exhibits chaotic oscillations. The energy exchange between subharmonics and superharmonics of the least-stable spanwise wave number is considered. The presence of subharmonic Fourier modes are shown to accelerate the transition to temporally chaotic motion. (c) 1996 American Institute of Physics.
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