Controllability of flow turbulence

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2004 Jun;69(6 Pt 2):066214. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.69.066214. Epub 2004 Jun 16.

Abstract

In this paper, we study the controllability of real-world flow turbulence governed by the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations, using strategies developed in chaos control. A case of control/synchronization of turbulent dynamics is observed when only one component of the velocity field vector is unidirectionally coupled to a target state, while the other component is uncoupled. Unlike previous results, it is shown that the dynamics of the whole velocity field cannot be completely controlled/synchronized to the target, even in the limit of long time and strong coupling strength. It is further revealed that the controlled component of the velocity field can be fully controlled/synchronized to the target, but the other component, which is not directly coupled to the target, can only be partially controlled/synchronized to the target. By extending an auxiliary method to distributed dynamic systems, the partial synchronization of two turbulent orbits in the present study can be categorized in the domain of generalized synchronization of spatiotemporal dynamics.