Experimental evidence of a phase transition in a closed turbulent flow

الأصل · EN

We experimentally study the susceptibility to symmetry breaking of a closed turbulent von Kármán swirling flow from Re = 150 to Re ≃ 10⁶. We report a divergence of this susceptibility at an intermediate Reynolds number Re = Reχ≃ 90000 which gives experimental evidence that such a highly space and time fluctuating system can undergo a "phase transition". This transition is furthermore associated with a peak in the amplitude of fluctuations of the instantaneous flow symmetry corresponding to intermittencies between spontaneously symmetry breaking metastable states.