New work shows fluid in a curved pipe can undergo discontinuous transition

Turbulence is everywhere, but a large part of the nature of turbulence remains unknown. Over the past decade, physicists have discovered how fluids in a hose or transition from similar geometry of a smooth laminar state to a turbulent state as their speed increases.

Surprisingly, in the newly emerging consensus, the process could be understood by using statistical mechanics, not on fluid mechanics, and was mathematically equivalent to the way water is punctuated through a coffee filter.

In a new turn, the researchers from San Diego of the UC Guru K. Jayasingh and Nigel Goldenfeld have now predicted that if the pipe is sufficiently curved, the transition can become discontinuous, the turbulent fraction undergoing a jump beyond a critical flow speed. This jump is mathematically similar to how water can suddenly and discontinued in ice if it is cooled under freezing temperature.

The new framework – so much called the sorter -managed percolation – includes both emerging consensus and very recent experiences, as well as new predictions.

The study is published in Physical examination letters.

Their work shows that the entire phase transition apparatus, originally developed for thermodynamics, and now fundamental in materials science, chemistry and physics, can be applied to certain transition phenomena in fluid mechanics.

“Our work is, once again, a striking example of the way in which multidisciplinary approaches can produce unexpected solutions to hard scientific problems – in this case, a case dates back more than a century,” explains Goldenfeld, a distinguished professor of Chancellor’s physics.