For turbulent flows at relatively low speeds there exists an excellent mathematical model in the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. Why then is the 'problem of turbulence' so difficult? One reason is that these nonlinear partial differential equations appear to be insoluble, except through numerical simulations, which offer useful approximations but little direct understanding. Three recent developments offer new hope. First, the discovery by experimentalists of coherent structures in certain turbulent flows. Secondly, the suggestion that strange attractors and other ideas from finite-dimensional dynamical systems theory might play a role in the analysis of the governing equations. And, finally, the introduction of the Karhunen-Loève or proper orthogonal decomposition. This book introduces these developments and describes how they may be combined to create low-dimensional models of turbulence, resolving only the coherent structures. This book will interest engineers, especially in the aerospace, chemical, civil, environmental and geophysical areas, as well as physicists and applied mathematicians concerned with turbulence.

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We generalize the class of models of the wall layer of Aubry et al. (1988), based on the proper orthogonal decomposition, to permit uncoupled evolution of streamwise and cross-stream disturbances. Since the Reynolds stress is no longer constrained, in the absence of streamwise spatial variations all perturbation velocity components eventually decay to zero. However, their transient behaviour is dominated by ’ghosts’ of the non-trivial fixed points and attracting heteroclinic cycles which are characteristic features of those models based on empirical eigenfunctions whose individual velocity components are fixed. This suggests that the intermittent events observed in Aubry et al. do not arise solely because of the effective closure assumption incorporated in those models, but are rooted deeper in the dynamical phenomenon of the wall region.