Quantifying the Role of Folding in Nonautonomous Flows: The Unsteady Double-Gyre

Abstract

We analyze chaos in the well-known nonautonomous Double-Gyre system. A key focus is on folding, which is possibly the less-studied aspect of the “stretching+folding=chaos” mantra of chaotic dynamics. Despite the Double-Gyre not having the classical homoclinic structure for the usage of the Smale–Birkhoff theorem to establish chaos, we use the concept of folding to prove the existence of an embedded horseshoe map. We also show how curvature of manifolds can be used to identify fold points in the Double-Gyre. This method is applicable to general nonautonomous flows in two dimensions, defined for either finite or infinite times.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2017
Source ID
10.1142/s0218127417501565

Entities

People

  • Erik Bollt
  • K. G. D. Sulalitha Priyankara
  • Sanjeeva Balasuriya

Organizations

  • Army Research Office
  • Australian Research Council
  • Clarkson University
  • Office of Naval Research
  • University of Adelaide

Tags

Readers

  • Control Systems Engineering.
  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)
  • Molecular Genetics