Dynamic mode decomposition analysis of coherent structures in rotating plane Couette flow

Abstract

Large scale structures have been observed in many turbulent wall bounded flows, such as pipe, Couette or square duct flows. Many efforts have been made in order to capture such structures to understand and model them. However, commonly used methods have their limitations, such as arbitrariness in parameter choice or specificity to certain setups. In this manuscript we attempt to overcome these limitations by using two variants of Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD). We apply these methods to (rotating) Plane Couette flow, and verify that DMD-based methods are adequate to detect the coherent structures and to extract the distinct properties arising from different control parameters. In particular, these DMD variants are able to capture the influence of rotation on large-scale structures by coupling velocity components. We also show how high-order DMD methods are able to capture some complex temporal dynamics of the large-scale structures. These results show that DMD-based methods are a promising way of filtering and analysing wall bounded flows.