Spots and turbulent domains in a model of transitional plane Couette flow

A review of the globally subcritical transition to turbulence in shear flows is presented, with an emphasis on the cases of plane and circular Couette flows (pCf and cCf, respectively). A Swift–Hohenberg-like model is next proposed to interpret the behavior of plane Couette flow in the vicinity of its global stability threshold. We present results of numerical simulations supporting this proposal and helping us to raise good questions about the growth and decay of intermittent turbulent domains in this precise context, and more generally about the coexistence of laminar flow and turbulence in other spatio-temporally intermittent flows. PACS 47.27.-i, 47.54.-r, 05.45.-a