Hof B, Juel A, Mullin T
Manchester Center for Nonlinear Dynamics, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom.
Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Dec 12;91(24):244502. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.244502.
We report the results of an experimental investigation of the transition to turbulence in a pipe over approximately an order of magnitude range in the Reynolds number Re. A novel scaling law is uncovered using a systematic experimental procedure which permits contact to be made with modern theoretical thinking. The principal result we uncover is a scaling law which indicates that the amplitude of perturbation required to cause transition scales as O(Re-1).
