Aspect-ratio dependence of the attractor dimension in Taylor-Couette flow

Thesis/Dissertation · Thu Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1987

OSTI ID:6418021

Hirst, D A

An investigation of the aspect-ratio dependence of the attractor dimension in flow between concentric cylinders (Taylor-Couette flow) was performed with the inner cylinder rotating and the outer cylinder at rest. An increase in attractor dimension with aspect ratio might be expected since more modes should be required to describe a larger system. Phase-space attractors were reconstructed from experimental velocity data by time-delay methods and the attractor dimension calculated by both the Grassberger-Procaccia and Badii-Politi algorithms. The aspect ratio, the ratio of the height of the flow to the gap between the cylinders, was varied between 19.9 and 34.48. A second area explored was the bifurcation from Couette flow to secondary flow for counter-rotating cylinders. The bifurcation boundaries were located to an accuracy of 0.3% for outer cylinder Reynolds numbers ranging from 9 to -250. The locations of the codimension-2 points and the wave speeds and axial wave lengths measured at the transition boundaries compared well with recent linear stability analysis.

• Research Organization: Texas Univ., Austin (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6418021
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
420400* -- Engineering-- Heat Transfer & Fluid Flow
ASPECT RATIO
COUETTE FLOW
CYLINDERS
DIMENSIONS
FLUID FLOW
MATHEMATICAL SPACE
PHASE SPACE
SPACE
STABILITY
VISCOUS FLOW