Intermittency in convection with spherical symmetry: theory in an experimental perspective
by
Pascal Chossat
Laboratoire J-A Dieudonné, CNRS-UNSA, Faculté des Sciences, Parc Valrose, 06108 Nice Cedex
Coauthors: Philippe Beltrame

It has been known since 20 years that spherical symmetry can generate intermittent-like flow

near onset of convection for a fluid subjected to a central temperature gradient and gravity field.

This has been shown by applying the techniques of center manifold reduction and equivariant

bifurcation theory to the classical hydrodynamical model (Navier-Stokes and heat equations in

the Boussinesq approximation). An experiment to be mounted in the ISS could verify this

theoretical prediction. However in this experiment, the gravity field is replaced by an

electrophretic field, which turns out to considerably change the expected bifurcation diagram.

I explain the reasons for this and I present the latest results on this issue.

Date received: July 4, 2007

Copyright © 2007 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cavj-98.