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Updated: May 10, 2026

Measurements of Local Instantaneous Convective Heat Transfer in a Pipe - Single and Two-phase Flow
Published on: April 30, 2018
Streamwise-localized solutions at the onset of turbulence in pipe flow
M Avila1, F Mellibovsky, N Roland
1Institute of Fluid Mechanics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058 Erlangen, Germany. marc.avila@fau.de
Abstract:
Although the equations governing fluid flow are well known, there are no analytical expressions that describe the complexity of turbulent motion. A recent proposition is that in analogy to low dimensional chaotic systems, turbulence is organized around unstable solutions of the governing equations which provide the building blocks of the disordered dynamics. We report the discovery of periodic solutions which just like intermittent turbulence are spatially localized and show that turbulent transients arise from one such solution branch.
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