Dynamics of viscoelastic pipe flow at low Reynolds numbers in the maximum drag reduction limit

Polymer additives can substantially reduce the drag of turbulent flows and the upperlimit, the so called “maximum drag reduction” (MDR) asymptote is universal, i.e. inde-pendent of the type of polymer and solvent used. Until recently, the consensus was that,in this limit, flows are in a marginal state where only a minimal level of turbulence activ-ity persists. Observations in direct numerical simulations using minimal sized channelsappeared to support this view and reported long “hibernation” periods where turbu-lence is marginalized. In simulations of pipe flow we find that, indeed, with increasingWeissenberg number (Wi), turbulence expresses long periods of hibernation if the domainsize is small. However, with increasing pipe length, the temporal hibernation continuouslyalters to spatio-temporal intermittency and here the flow consists of turbulent puffs sur-rounded by laminar flow. Moreover, upon an increase in Wi, the flow fully relaminarises,in agreement with recent experiments. At even larger Wi, a different instability is en-countered causing a drag increase towards MDR. Our findings hence link earlier minimalflow unit simulations with recent experiments and confirm that the addition of polymersinitially suppresses Newtonian turbulence and leads to a reverse transition. The MDRstate on the other hand results from a separate instability and the underlying dynamicscorresponds to the recently proposed state of elasto-inertial-turbulence (EIT).