Torque Scaling in Turbulent Taylor-Couette Flow with Co- and Counterrotating Cylinders

Gils, Dennis P.M. and Huisman, Sander G. and Bruggert, Gert-Wim and Sun, Chao and Lohse, Detlef (2011) Torque Scaling in Turbulent Taylor-Couette Flow with Co- and Counterrotating Cylinders. Physical Review Letters, 106 (2). 024502. ISSN 0031-9007

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Abstract:	We analyze the global transport properties of turbulent Taylor-Couette flow in the strongly turbulent regime for independently rotating outer and inner cylinders, reaching Reynolds numbers of the inner and outer cylinders of Rei=2×106 and Reo=±1.4×106, respectively. For all Rei, Reo, the dimensionless torque G scales as a function of the Taylor number Ta (which is proportional to the square of the difference between the angular velocities of the inner and outer cylinders) with a universal effective scaling law G∝Ta0.88, corresponding to Nuω∝Ta0.38 for the Nusselt number characterizing the angular velocity transport between the inner and outer cylinders. The exponent 0.38 corresponds to the ultimate regime scaling for the analogous Rayleigh-Bénard system. The transport is most efficient for the counterrotating case along the diagonal in phase space with ωo≈-0.4ωi.
Item Type:	Article
Copyright:	© 2011 The American Physical Society
Faculty:	Science and Technology (TNW)
Research Group:	Physics of Fluids (POF)
Link to this item:	http://purl.utwente.nl/publications/78594
Official URL:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.024502
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