Harry L. Swinney

Onset of Turbulence in a Rotating Fluid

Light-scattering measurements of the time-dependent local radial velocity in a rotating fluid reveal three distinct transitions as the Reynolds number is increased, each of whic...

Dynamical instabilities and the transition to chaotic Taylor vortex flow

We have used the technique of laser-Doppler velocimetry to study the transition to turbulence in a fluid contained between concentric cylinders with the inner cylinder rotating....

Determining Lyapunov exponents from a time series

Low-Dimensional Chaos in a Hydrodynamic System

Evidence is presented for low-dimensional strange attractors in Couette-Taylor flow data. Computations of the largest Lyapunov exponent and metric entropy show that the system d...

Flow regimes in a circular Couette system with independently rotating cylinders

Our flow-visualization and spectral studies of flow between concentric independently rotating cylinders have revealed a surprisingly large variety of different flow states. (The...