transitional vortices in wide-gap spherical annulus flow过渡漩涡差距球形环空流.pdf

TRANSITIONAL VORTICES IN WIDE-GAP SPHERICAL ANNULUS FLOW E. O. IFIDON Received 19 August 2004 and in revised form 6 May 2005 We develop a semianalytic formulation suitable for solving the Navier-Stokes equations governing the induced steady, axially symmetric motion of an incompressible viscous fluid confined in a wide gap between two differentially rotating concentric spheres. The method is valid for arbitrarily high Reynolds number and aids in the presentation of multiple steady-state flow patterns and their bifurcations. In the case of a rotating inner sphere and a stationary outer sphere, linear stability analysis is conducted to determine whether or not the computed solutions are stable. It is found that the solution transforms smoothly into an unstable solution beginning with asymmetric vortex pairs identified near the point of a symmetry-breaking bifurcation which occurs at Reynolds number 589. This solution transforms smoothly into an unstable asymmetric vortex solution as the Reynolds number increases. Flow modes whose branches have not been previously re- ported are found using this method. The origin of the flow modes obtained are discussed using bifurcation theory. 1. Introduction Confined flows in rotating containers are known to exhibit multiple states, undergoing transitions from simple axisymmetric flows to complex asymmetric, irregular flows, with a multiplicity of structures including Taylor vortices. The classification of such multiple states and the transitions between them are of major importance in the understanding of geophysical phenomena and in the design of technological devices, and are therefore of fundamental interest for these systems [ 14]. Considerable information is available in the literature on the experimental classification of confined rotating flows [ 11], but analytic as well as numerical results are limited and incomplete especially for wide-gap spheri- cal systems. There exists a need therefore, for a comprehensi