Instabilities and Transition to Chaos in Flows between Concentric Cylinders
How does turbulence rise? For a long time, a century, the Taylor-Couette system was a paradigm for the researchers who tried to get answers to this question. Fascinating structures and patterns observed in the flow have attracted the interest of many researchers, both experimentalists and theorists. During the last century, many works were done on the closed Taylor-Couette systems. At the end of the seventies, after thousands of contributions, experiments performed in the Taylor-Couette system confirmed a theoretical analysis which concluded that a finite number of instabilities, two or three, are sufficient to lead to chaos or weak turbulence. Our own experiments were conducted at that time on a Taylor-Couette system with a moderate aspect ratio. They were analyzed from visual observation and fine local measurement with an electrochemical method. Scalar time series and data pointed out the frequencies characteristic of the flow. Many geometrical effects are considered by researchers. When the gap is horizontal and not completely filled, the flow obtained is called Taylor-Dean flow. We obtained similar flow in an azimuthally open Taylor-Couette system where a combination of the inner cylinder rotation and external fluid pumping, the Dean flow, produces the so called Taylor-Dean flow. Measurements and analysis were carried out by visualization and Laser Doppler Velocimetry. In addition to the experimental approach, we used Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis to complete the flow study. Numerical and experimental investigations reveal a class of instabilities of the Taylor-Dean flow not previously observed in the Taylor-Couette flow due to the cylinder rotation neither in the Dean flow due to the external pumping fluid.