Chaotic Flow Regimes in a Convection Loop

Abstract

In our experiments on a loop of fluid heated with a constant flux on the bottom half and cooled at a constant temperature on the top half, we have observed three chaotic flow regimes: a globally chaotic regime whose essential features can be described by a one-dimensional cusp-shaped map, a subcritical regime in which the flow can be either chaotic or steady, and a transient regime in which the flow remains chaotic for a time and then decays into a steady flow.