Viscous fluid flow in a wide annular gap of two rotating coaxial cylinders

Abstract

The Couette-Taylor flow is considered in a wide gap between coaxial cylinders in the case when the outer cylinder is at rest and the inner one rotates at a constant speed. Unsteady motion of a viscous fluid is described by the system of Navier-Stokes equations. The problem is solved by the control volume method in the OpenFOAM software. Two stable states were obtained depending on the surface rotation speed: the cylindrical Couette flow and the Taylor vortex flow. The calculation results are compared with the known data of other authors. The dependence of the dimensionless shear rate on the Taylor number is obtained.