On wavy instabilities of the Taylor-vortex flow between corotating cylinders

1988 ◽  
Vol 188 ◽  
pp. 585-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masato Nagata

At least four wavy instabilities are found numerically by analysing the linear stability of Taylor-vortex flow (TVF) in the limit of a small gap between two concentric cylinders which rotate differentially in the same direction. Two of the wavy instabilities, including the one leading to conventional wavy vortex (WVF), have the same axial wavelength as TVF at the onset of instability, while the other two are characterized by subharmonic modes with axial wavelengths twice as long as those of TVF. The two subharmonic instabilities appear to correspond to the wavy-inflow-boundary flow (WIB) and the wavy-outflow-boundary flow (WOB) observed in the experiment of Andereck, Liu & Swinney (1986). The phase velocities, measured in the rotating frame of reference, of all the wavy instabilities are non-zero at the onset except that the phase velocity of WVF vanishes in the region where the average rotation rate Ω of the cylinders is small. By using this simple bifurcation property of WVF for small Ω, time-independent finite-amplitude non-axisymmetric solution branches bifurcating from TVF are followed numerically. The most interesting findings are that some of the solution branches cross the line Ω = 0, producing three-dimensional nonlinear solutions in plane Couette flow.

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Wang ◽  
C. Shu ◽  
Y. T. Chew

Abstract In this study, the GDQ method was used to simulate a specific flow regime, Taylor vortex flow, of the motion of fluids between two concentric cylinders with rotating inner cylinder and stationary outer cylinder. An approach combining the SIMPLE strategy and GDQ discretization based on non-staggered mesh was proposed to solve the time-dependent, three-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in primitive variable form. The numerical solution obtained has the accuracy of second-order in temporal discretization and high-order in spatial discretization. Also, this numerical code may allow the direct numerical simulations for the various regimes of Couette-Taylor flow problem. The performance of this approach was studied through a test case of Taylor vortex flow. The reported numerical results were compared with those from others. For this approach, accurate numerical results can be obtained by using fewer grid points compared with low-order methods. As a consequence, the computational effort can be greatly reduced.


1999 ◽  
Vol 400 ◽  
pp. 33-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROGER E. KHAYAT

The influence of inertia and elasticity on the onset and stability of Taylor-vortex flow (TVF) is examined for an Oldroyd-B fluid. The Galerkin projection method is used to obtain the departure from Couette flow (CF). Only axisymmetric flow is examined. The solution is capable of capturing the dynamical behaviour observed experimentally for viscoelastic fluids in the inertio-elastic and purely elastic ranges. For flow with dominant inertia, the bifurcation picture is similar to that for a Newtonian fluid. However, transition from CF to TVF is oscillatory because of fluid elasticity. Steady TVF sets in, via supercritical bifurcation, as Re reaches a critical value, Rec. The critical Reynolds number decreases with fluid elasticity, and is strongly influenced by fluid retardation. As elasticity exceeds a critical level, a subcritical bifurcation emerges at Rec, similar to that predicted by the Landau–Ginzburg equation. It is found that slip along the axial direction tends to be generally destabilizing. The coherence of the formulation is established under steady and transient conditions through comparison with exact linear stability analysis, experimental measurements, and flow visualization. Good agreement is obtained between theory and the measurements of Muller et al. (1993) in the limit of purely elastic overstable TVF.


1979 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Barcilon ◽  
J. Brindley ◽  
M. Lessen ◽  
F. R. Mobbs

We report on a set of turbulent flow experiments of the Taylor type in which the fluid is contained between a rotating inner circular cylinder and a fixed concentric outer cylinder, focusing our attention on very large Taylor number values, i.e. \[ 10^3 \leqslant T/T_c \leqslant 10^5, \] where Tc is the critical value of the Taylor number T for onset of Taylor vortices. At such large values of T, the turbulent vortex flow structure is similar to the one observed when T – Tc is small and this structure is apparently insensitive to further increases in T. These flows are characterized by two widely separated length scales: the scale of the gap width which characterizes the Taylor vortex flow and a much smaller scale which is made visible by streaks in the form of a ‘herring-bone’-like pattern visible at the walls. These are conjectured to be Görtler vortices which arise as a result of centrifugal instability in the wall boundary layers. Ideas of marginal instability by which we postulate that both the Taylor and Görtler vortex structures are marginally unstable on their own scale seem to provide good quantitative agreement between predicted and observed Görtler vortex spacings.


In an earlier paper, Blennerhassett & Hall (1979) investigated the linear stability of the flow between concentric cylinders of finite length. The inner cylinder was taken to rotate, while the outer cylinder was fixed. Furthermore, the end walls rotated such that the flow was purely circumferential. In this paper the finite amplitude development of the unstable disturbances to the flow is considered. It is found that the usual perturbation expansion of nonlinear stability theory must be modified if the cylinders are not infinitely long. The bifurcation to a Taylor vortex flow in finite cylinders is shown to be two-sided. The latter effect is shown to be a direct consequence of the finiteness of the cylinders and by taking the cylinders to be very long, we recover the results obtained previously for the infinite problem. The interaction of the two most dangerous modes of linear theory is also investigated. For certain values of the length of the cylinders the initial finite amplitude Taylor vortex flow is shown to become unstable to another class of axisymmetric disturbances. The effect of perturbing the end conditions towards the no-slip conditions appropriate to most experimental configurations is also discussed. Some discussion of the instability problem in very long cylinders with fixed ends is given.


1974 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. DiPrima ◽  
J. T. Stuart

At sufficiently high operating speeds in lightly loaded journal bearings the basic laminar flow will be unstable. The instability leads to a new steady secondary motion of ring vortices around the cylinders with a regular periodicity in the axial direction and a strength that depends on the azimuthial position (Taylor vortices). Very recently published work on the basic flow and the stability of the basic flow between eccentric circular cylinders with the inner cylinder rotating is summarized so as to provide a unified description. A procedure for calculating the Taylor-vortex flow is developed, a comparison with observed properties of the flow field is made, and formulas for the load and torque are given.


2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (7) ◽  
pp. 692-695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naoto Ohmura ◽  
Hirokazu Okamoto ◽  
Tsukasa Makino ◽  
Kunio Kataoka

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