Stochastic model of organizational state transitions in a turbulent pipe flow

Turbulent pipe flows exhibit organizational states (OSs) that are labeled by discrete azimuthal wave number modes and are reminiscent of the traveling wave solutions of low Reynolds number regimes. The discretized time evolution of the OSs, obtained through stereoscopic particle image velocimetry, is shown to be non-Markovian for data acquisition carried out at a structure-resolved sampling rate. In particular, properly defined time-correlation functions for the OS transitions are observed to decay as intriguing power laws, up to a large-eddy time horizon, beyond which they decorrelate at much faster rates. We are able to establish, relying upon a probabilistic description of the creation and annihilation of streamwise streaks, a lower-level Markovian model for the OS transitions, which reproduces their time-correlated behavior with meaningful accuracy. These findings indicate that the OSs are distributed along the pipe as statistically correlated packets of quasistreamwise vortical structures.