Levich Institute Seminar Announcement, 02/22/2005

Tuesday, 02/22/2005 2:00 PM Steinman Hall, Room #312 (Chemical Engineering Conference Room) Professor Bruno Eckhardt University of Marburg (Currently on Sabbatical at University of Maryland) "Transition to Turbulence in Pipe Flow"

ABSTRACT
Pipe flow belongs to the group of flows that do not show a linear instability, yet become turbulent for sufficiently high flow speeds. Building on experience in dynamical systems we have proposed a scenario for the transition that involves subcritical bifurcations to unstable travelling waves that form a strange saddle. Numerical and experimental evidence for this scenario will be presented.

BRIEF ACADEMIC/EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

• MSc in Physics Georgia Tech (1982)
• PhD in Physics, Universitaet Bremen (1986)
• Postdoc in Juelich, Marburg, San Diego and Rehovot
• Professor in Oldenburg 1992-1996
• Professor in Marburg since 1996
• Burgers Visiting Professor University of Maryland 2004/05

CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS

Nonlinear dynamics/dynamical systems with few and many degrees of freedom, classical and quantum. I have worked on quantum chaos, periodic orbit theory, fully developed turbulence and transition to turbulence, but fluid dynamics is taking more and more of my time and interests.

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