Rapid Transition to Turbulence in Pipe Flows Accelerated From Rest

Abstract

Rapid transition to turbulence in a pipe flow, initially at rest, was achieved by temporally accelerating the flow and then sharply decelerating it to its final Reynolds number. The acceleration phase was characterized by the growth of a laminar boundary layer close to the wall. The subsequent rapid deceleration resulted in inflectional velocity profiles near the wall, followed immediately by transition to turbulence. The time taken to transition was significantly less than the time to transition in a pipe flow monotonically accelerated to the same Reynolds number. Transition is intrinsically different to that observed in oscillatory pipe flows, but is qualitatively similar to pipe flows decelerated to rest.