Flow around a slender circular cylinder: A case study on distributed Hopf bifurcation

Abstract

This paper presents a short overview of the flow around a slender circular cylinder, the purpose being to place it within the frame of the distributed Hopf bifurcation problems described by the Ginzburg-Landau equation (GLE). In particular, the chaotic behavior superposed to a well tuned harmonic oscillation observed in the range Re > 270, with Re being the Reynolds number, is related to the defect-chaos regime of the GLE. Apparently new results, related to a Kolmogorov like length scale and the rms of the response amplitude, are derived in this defect-chaos regime and further related to the experimental rms of the lift coefficient measured in the range Re > 270.