“I-Spots” and Emmons’ Spot Production Rate

Abstract

A new intermittency function flagging the turbulent, becalmed, and non-becalmed regions of transitional flow is introduced. In addition, a method is developed to detect embedded incipient turbulent spots within the non-becalmed regions of the flow, which are then documented, counted, and related to Emmons’ spot production rate. This in turn is used to calculate an intermittency distribution which when compared with that measured displays an excellent agreement. Finally, it is shown that correlations based on Narasimha’s intermittency equation are highly questionable.