Laminar-turbulent patterning in wall-bounded shear flows: a Galerkin model

On its way to turbulence, plane Couette flow-the flow between counter-translating parallel plates-displays a puzzling steady oblique laminar-turbulent pattern. We approach this problem via Galerkin modelling of the Navier-Stokes equations. The wall-normal dependence of the hydrodynamic field is treated by means of expansions on functional bases fitting the boundary conditions exactly. This yields a set of partial differential equations for spatiotemporal dynamics in the plane of the flow. Truncating this set beyond the lowest nontrivial order is numerically shown to produce the expected pattern, therefore improving over what was obtained at the cruder effective wall-normal resolution. Perspectives opened by this approach are discussed.