Turbulent pattern formation in plane Couette flow: Modelling and investigation of mechanisms

International audienceIn the transitional range of Reynolds number, plane Couette flow exhibits oblique turbulent bands. We focus on a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability occurring in the intermediate area between turbulent and laminar flow. The instability is characterised by means of Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS): a short wavelength instability, localised and advected in the spanwise direction. The coherent background flow on which the instability develops is extracted from DNS data, and an analytical formulation for the background flow is proposed. Linear stability analysis is performed to investigate its main mechanisms and its convective or absolute nature, depending on the location in the flow. Both DNS and linear stability analysis indicate that the instability takes place in a confined area "inside" turbulent streaks. This proceeding sums up the results from an article in preparation (Rolland, 2011)