Non Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics And Turbulence

This self-contained volume introduces modern methods of statistical mechanics in turbulence, with three harmonised lecture courses by world class experts.

This self-contained volume introduces modern methods of statistical mechanics in turbulence, with three harmonised lecture courses by world class experts.

This self-contained volume introduces modern methods of statistical mechanics in turbulence, with three harmonised lecture courses by world class experts.

This book stresses the role of uncorrelated exchange of properties between macroscopic systems and their surroundings as the only source of dynamic irreversibility. To that end, fundamentals of statistical thermodynamics extended to the non-equilibrium are worked out carefully. The principles are then applied to selected problems in classical fluid dynamics. Transport coefficients are first derived from basic laws. This is followed by a full discussion of transitions to dissipative structures in selected systems far removed from equilibrium (Bénard and Taylor vortices, calculation of the critical Reynolds number for transition to turbulence in Poiseuille flow). The final part focuses on interaction of matter with light. Fundamentals are extended towards quantum-mechanical systems. Applied to coherent radiation and its interaction with matter, the proposed thermodynamic treatment introduces an original discussion into the quantum nature of micro-physics.The book questions and reconsiders a deeply rooted paradigm in macroscopic dynamics concerning the cause of irreversibility. The new proposal is illustrated by application to a couple of well documented non-equilibrium domains, namely fluid dynamics and laser physics.

This book presents an integral formulation of hydrodynamics in order to derive the pressure tensor and expressions of non-divergent transport coefficients. At the same time, the impossibility of finding pathologic solutions of the Liouville equation that may be identified with turbulence are examined. This book collects the ideas and papers that build up to the conclusion that turbulence is a quantum phenomenon, thereby encouraging more experimental and theoretical work in quantum non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. The book opens up a modern approach to the "classical" theory of turbulence, of interest to both engineers and physicists.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue Intermittency and Self-Organisation in Turbulence and Statistical Mechanics that was published in Entropy

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