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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Measurements of Local Instantaneous Convective Heat Transfer in a Pipe - Single and Two-phase Flow
Published on: April 30, 2018
Experimental evidence of a phase transition in a closed turbulent flow
P-P Cortet1, A Chiffaudel, F Daviaud
1CEA, IRAMIS, SPEC, CNRS URA 2464, Groupe Instabilités et Turbulence, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
Abstract:
We experimentally study the susceptibility to symmetry breaking of a closed turbulent von Kármán swirling flow from Re=150 to Re≃10⁶. We report a divergence of this susceptibility at an intermediate Reynolds number Re=Re(χ)≃90,000 which gives experimental evidence that such a highly space and time fluctuating system can undergo a "phase transition." This transition is furthermore associated with a peak in the amplitude of fluctuations of the instantaneous flow symmetry corresponding to intermittencies between spontaneously symmetry breaking metastable states.
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