Burst Mechanisms in Hydrodynamics

Different mechanisms believed to be responsible for the generation of bursts in hydrodynamical systems are reviewed and a new mechanism capable of generating regular or irregular bursts of large dynamic range near threshold is described. The new mechanism is present in the interaction between oscillatory modes of odd and even parity in systems of large but finite aspect ratio, and provides an explanation for the bursting behavior observed in binary fluid convection. Additional applications of the new mechanism are proposed.