Experimental observation of chaos-chaos intermittency types in spherical Couette flow

Abstract

Transitional processes to turbulence often are accompanied by intermittency in the form of laminar and turbulent bands, alternating in space and/or time. Intermittency was observed in transitional flows in tubes [1] and in flows, induced by the motion of the walls in opposite directions. Well-known cases of such flows are the plane Couette flow (PCF) -between flat boundaries [2,3], circular (CCF) -between rotating coaxial cylinders [4,5] and spherical [6,7] (SCF) -between coaxial rotating spheres. The possibility of coexistence in the spatial/temporal structure of distinct bands with Flows between concentric, counter rotating spherical boundaries are under investigation in the gap with size equal to inner sphere radius. Outer sphere rotational rate is fixed, while inner sphere rotational rate has time periodic variations. The