Experimental observation of a permanent reflectional symmetry breaking (RSB) is reported for a laminar three-dimensional wake. Based on flow visualizations, a first bifurcation from the trivial steady symmetric state to a steady RSB state is characterized at Re=340. The RSB state becomes unsteady after a second bifurcation at Re=410. It is found that this RSB regime is persistent at large Reynolds numbers and is responsible for a bistable turbulent wake.
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Grandemange et al. (2012) studied this question.
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