Origins Of Turbulence

Summary

There is a great variety of ways/routes in which a laminar flow becomes turbulent, just like there are many ways to establish the same turbulent flow. In other words, the view that turbulent flows always develop from the laminar ones is too narrow.

Once a flow becomes turbulent, it seems impossible to find out its origin. The reason is due to the chaotic nature and the irreversibility of turbulent flows.

The main difference between the transition to chaos and to turbulence is that in the former the number of degrees of freedom remains fixed, whereas in the latter the number of degrees of freedom increases strongly with increases in the Reynolds number and/or other similar parameters.