Llinas' Phase Reset Mechanism Delays the Onset of Chaos in Shark and Dolphin Wall Turbulence

Abstract

Turbulent boundary layers (TBLs) develop in the flow over planetary surfaces, over the bodies of swimming animals (like sharks and dolphins), and over the hulls of ships and submarines. Evidence points to organization in turbulence production, despite the apparent randomness and lack of a unified theory. Here, the dynamical systems of neuroscience are used to develop a self-regulation theory to show for the first time how the skins of sharks and dolphins control the chaos of turbulence. To remove the apparent randomness, the turbulence production cycles are split into pre- and post-breakdown regions, both during the organized laminar-to-turbulent transition and in the TBL, which is chaotic. Stuart-Landau oscillators describe the instabilities of the surface-normal diffusion of vorticity, which is coupled to the instabilities' span-wise diffusion. Similar to Llinas' olivo-cerebellar temporal phase reset mechanism, the shark and dolphin skins impose combinations of vorticity diffusion templates internal to the oscillators and external microvibration or flow oscillations, synchronizing the oscillators laterally and thereby eliminating chaos. The theory proving biological adaptation to environment has potential application to tornado path management. Shark and dolphin skins are major targets of reverse engineering mechanisms of drag and noise reduction.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 10, 2014
Accession Number
ADA624424

Entities

People

  • Aren Hellum
  • Promode R. Bandyopadhyay

Organizations

  • Naval Undersea Warfare Center

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundaries
  • Boundary Layer
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Diffusion
  • Fish
  • Flow Visualization
  • Fluid Flow
  • Layers
  • Oscillation
  • Oscillators
  • Physics Laboratories
  • Skin Friction
  • Three Dimensional
  • Turbulence
  • Turbulent Boundary Layer
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Control Systems Engineering.
  • Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics.
  • Marine Mammal Biology