Abstract
Turbulence can be suppressed by a small amount of surfactant additives. To understand the physical mechanism of the turbulence suppression, we experimentally investigated the effect of the addition of surfactant on the transition from steady flow to turbulence in a precessing sphere. The most unstable mode of the steady flow for surfactant solution is the same as in the case of water, although turbulence is drastically suppressed by surfactant additives at higher Reynolds numbers.
