Experimental search for exact coherent structures in turbulent small-aspect-ratio Taylor-Couette flow

Recent work suggests that the dynamics of turbulent shear driven flows are guided by special unstable solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations that have nontrivial spatial structure and temporally simple dynamics. These solutions, known as exact coherent structures (ECS), play a key role in a fundamentally deterministic description of turbulence. Here we report preliminary results from a small-aspect-ratio (Γ = 1) Taylor-Couette system at a radius ratio of η = 0.7 where time resolved 3D-3C velocity measurements are performed in the entire flow domain. In particular, we compare, at the same parameter values, experimental measurements of turbulent flow with ECS computed in Direct Numerical Simulation.