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Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Fabrication, Operation and Flow Visualization in Surface-acoustic-wave-driven Acoustic-counterflow Microfluidics
Published on: August 27, 2013
Transition in localized pipe flow turbulence
Fernando Mellibovsky1, Alvaro Meseguer, Tobias M Schneider
1Departament de Física Aplicada, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 08034, Barcelona, Spain.
Abstract:
Direct numerical simulation of transitional pipe flow is carried out in a long computational domain in order to characterize the dynamics within the saddle region of phase space that separates laminar flow from turbulent intermittency. For Reynolds numbers ranging from Re=1800 to 2800, a shoot and bisection method is used to compute critical trajectories. The chaotic saddle or edge state approached by these trajectories is studied in detail. For Re< or =2000 the edge state and the corresponding intermittent puff are shown to share similar averaged global properties. For Re> or =2200, the puff length grows unboundedly whereas the edge state varies only little with Re. In this regime, transition is shown to proceed in two steps: first the energy grows to produce a localized turbulent patch, which then, during the second stage, spreads out to fill the pipe.
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