Early Nonperiodic Transitions in Couette Flow

Abstract

Experimental evidence is presented which shows that couette flow has several transitions at quite low Reynolds numbers compared to the Taylor transition ($\frac{R}{R_c}\approx 1$) which exhibit increased degrees of freedom, line broadening, extra broad-band noise, loss of spatial coherence, and hysteresis. The visual signature of these transitions has been identified as dislocations in the cell structure.