Origination and evolution of turbulent flows in a rotating spherical layer

Abstract

The object of consideration is the turbulent flows of a viscous incompressible liquid that arises in a wide spherical layer with counter-rotating boundaries (the thickness of the layer equals the radius of the inner sphere). Regimes established when the outer sphere rotates with a constant velocity and the inner one rotates with an increasing velocity are studied in physical and numerical experiments. The averaged meridional circulation and the pulsation profiles of all velocity components are derived by direct calculation. It is found that both observed and simulated turbulent regimes are characterized by the continuous spectrum of velocity pulsation near their formation boundary. In going from the laminar to chaotic regime, the correlation dimension increases stepwise and then slightly varies with increasing Reynolds number in a nonlinear manner.