Prandtl-Tietjens intermittency in transitional pipe flows

Pipe flow often traverses a regime where laminar and turbulent flow co-exist. Prandtl and Tietjens explained this intermittency as a feedback between the fluctuations of the internal flow resistance and the constant pressure drop driving the flow. However, because the focus has moved towards studying intermittency without flow fluctuations near the universal critical Reynolds number, their explanation has largely disappeared. Here we refine the mechanism, which has never been put to a quantitative test, to develop a model that agrees with experiments at higher Reynolds numbers, enabling us to demonstrate that Prandtl and Tietjens' mechanism is, in fact, intrinsic to flows where both the pressure gradient and perturbation are constant.

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