A Study of the Taylor-Couette Flow with Finned Surface Rotation

Abstract

In this study, the Taylor-Couette flow was disturbed by incorporating annular fins over the inner rotating surface. The finned surface had three parameters: height, width, and length between fins. In this work, seven different fin configurations, in which only the fin height varied, were examined and compared using experimental and numerical techniques. We found that annular fins disturbed the flow behavior by reducing the smooth critical Taylor number (Ta=57.18), but more important, we noticed a vortex enlargement induced by the incorporation of a relatively modest perturbation (b´<0.5) and this change remained in a wider range (0.57<T<14.18). On the other hand, it was identified the appearance of smaller secondary vortices just over the fins, it is as a result of an increment in fin height. The relevance of this finding lies on the field of micro-mixing processes.

Keywords

• Critical rotation rate; Taylor vortex; Annular fins; Taylor-couette flow; Finned rotor; CFD; Vorticity; Micromixing.