Wired Magazine recently asked some "Big Questions" in the cover story. This is one of them.
Details:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/bigquestions.html?pg=3#turbulence
2007-03-16 05:03:37 · 2 answers · asked by Rafe Furst 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Engineering
Turbulent flow is basically chaos theory at work. There ARE cause and effect relationships, but they're so dependent on initial conditions that accurately predicting what will happen is impossible. Minute changes in variables such as flow rate will completely change the behavior of the system. And by minute I mean beyond the ability of lab equipment to accurately measure. As analytical techniques and computer processing power increase it should be eventually possible to fully understand (and model) turbulence using computational fluid dynamics. But for right now we just don't have the precision. The backbone is in place, namely the first principles that form the basis of fluid dynamics. It's just applying them on the right scale that's such a problem.
2007-03-16 08:29:58 · answer #1 · answered by Bigsky_52 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It's chaotic and there is no way to predict what will happen to the flow based on the present conditions.
2007-03-16 05:08:53 · answer #2 · answered by Gene 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋