English

Abstract

This paper focuses on the behavior of the boundary-layer laminar flow produced by a large radius no-thickness disc which rotates inside an axial stream. Some early solutions are only known for the upstream flow field, but the details of the flow behind the disc are still obscure. A better understanding of the mechanisms and the properties of the shear layer close to disc is sought through the development of an analytic theory and then is completed by CFD computations. This article also shows that the basic flow on the leeward side of disc is mostly rotational-inviscid and only on in the neighborhood of the disc surface there is a viscous layer which rotates drawn by disc. The viscous layer containing a thin Ekman sublayer and a thicker essentially inviscid superlayer, governed by Taylor-Proudman theorem, can carry three possible actions: centrifugal (pumping) mode, neutral mode and centripetal (suction) mode. The action type depends on the relative importance of effects given by translation of the fluid (W) and rotation of the disc (ΩR), defined by a rotating parameter (W/ΩR). The existence of such modes is connected to the amount of angular momentum transferred outside the Ekman sublayer. A CFD analysis was used to identify the vortex structure which is responsible for the angular momentum transfer from the rotating disc to an axial stream.