New approaches and concepts in turbulence

the long version

This book contains the proceedings of a colloquium held in Monte Verità from September 9-13, 1991. Special care has been taken to devote adequate space to the scientific discussions, which claimed about half of the time available. Scientists from all over the world presented their views on the importance of kinematic properties, topology and fractal geometry, and on the dynamic behaviour of turbulent flows. They debated the importance of coherent structures and the possibility to incorporate these in the statistical theory of turbulence, as well as their significance for the reduction of the degrees of freedom and the prospective of dynamical systems and chaos approaches to the problem of turbulence. Also under discussion was the relevance of these new approaches to the study of the instability and the origin of turbulence, and the importance of numerical and physical experiments in improving the understanding of turbulence.