Viscosity: its appearance at ultra-short scale, viscous stream buckling and a novel approach to determine critical values of the Reynolds number for laminar-turbulent transition

Abstract

The appearance of the phenomenon of viscosity from the interference of narrow quantum wave packets is discussed. An estimate for the scale, on which viscosity disappears, is provided. The model of viscous streams’ buckling is used to determine values of the local Reynolds numbers, for which transition to turbulence begins. A universal relation between the local and global critical values of Reynolds numbers is derived. The values of the local Reynolds numbers are then used to estimate
the global critical Reynolds numbers, and the values obtained for some well-known flows agree well with empirically obtained values found in the literature.