Radial buoyancy effects on momentum and heat transfer in a circular Couette flow

Abstract

The numerical investigation of a circular Couette flow with a radial temperature gradient is performed to elucidate the influence of the radial buoyancy on flow and heat transfer for different values of the Prandtl number when the gravitational acceleration is neglected. We consider an infinite-length cylindrical annulus of radius ratio 0.8 with the inner rotating cylinder and the outer stationary cylinder. The flow is stabilized with the outward heating while it is destabilized with the inward heating. A weakly nonlinear analysis shows that the transition to stationary axisymmetric modes is supercritical while the oscillatory axisymmetric modes occur via a subcritical bifurcation. The effect of the centrifugal buoyancy on the transfer of angular momentum (i.e., torque) is quite weak while the effect on the heat transfer is significant.