title: Transient turbulence in plane Couette flow.
abstract: Plane Couette flow, the flow between two parallel plates moving in opposite directions, belongs to the group of shear flows where turbulence occurs while the laminar profile is stable. Experimental and numerical studies show that at intermediate Reynolds numbers turbulence is transient and that the lifetimes are distributed exponentially. However, these studies have remained inconclusive about a divergence in lifetimes above a critical Reynolds number. The extensive numerical results for flow in a box of width 2pi and length 8pi presented here cover observation times up to 12,000 units and show that while the lifetimes increase rapidly with Reynolds number, they do not indicate a divergence and therefore no transition to persistent turbulence.
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
authors.forename: Tobias M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.forename: Filippo
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: De Lillo
authors.forename: Juergen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Buehrle
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Eckhardt
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dörnemann
authors.forename: Kay
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dörnemann
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Freisleben