Second Taylor vortex flow: Effects of radius ratio and aspect ratio

Abstract

This paper is motivated by our earlier investigation on the stability of Taylor–Couette flow in which we discovered a previously unidentified flow regime, which we refer to as “Second Taylor vortex flow” (STVF) when an inner cylinder is subjected to some critical acceleration [Lim, Chew, and Xiao, Phys. Fluids 10, 3233 (1998)]. The aim here is to explore how the STVF regime is affected by changes in radius ratio and aspect ratio. Results show that the STVF regime is sensitive to the gap size between the two cylinders, and does not exist for some radius ratios, whereas it increases with decreasing aspect ratio.