A statistical mechanics framework for the large-scale structure of turbulent von Karman flows

Abstract : In the present paper, recent experimental results on large-scale coherent steady states observed in experimental von Karman flows are revisited from a statistical mechanics perspective. The latter is rooted on two levels of description. We first argue that the coherent steady states may be described as the equilibrium states of well-chosen lattice models, which can be used to define global properties of von Karman flows, such as their temperatures. The equilibrium description is then enlarged, in order to reinterpret a series of results about the stability of those steady states and their susceptibility to symmetry breaking, in the light of a deep analogy with the statistical theory of ferro-magnetism.