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A novel subcritical transition to turbulence in Taylor–Couette flow with counter-rotating cylinders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2020

Christopher J. Crowley Open the ORCID record for Christopher J. Crowley [Opens in a new window] ,
Michael C. Krygier Open the ORCID record for Michael C. Krygier [Opens in a new window] ,
Daniel Borrero-Echeverry Open the ORCID record for Daniel Borrero-Echeverry [Opens in a new window] ,
Roman O. Grigoriev Open the ORCID record for Roman O. Grigoriev [Opens in a new window]  and
Michael F. Schatz Open the ORCID record for Michael F. Schatz [Opens in a new window]
Christopher J. Crowley*
Affiliation:
Center for Nonlinear Science and School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA30332, USA
Michael C. Krygier
Affiliation:
Center for Nonlinear Science and School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA30332, USA
Daniel Borrero-Echeverry
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Willamette University, Salem, OR97301, USA
Roman O. Grigoriev
Affiliation:
Center for Nonlinear Science and School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA30332, USA
Michael F. Schatz
Affiliation:
Center for Nonlinear Science and School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA30332, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

The transition to turbulence in Taylor–Couette flow often occurs via a sequence of supercritical bifurcations to progressively more complex, yet stable, flows. We describe a subcritical laminar–turbulent transition in the counter-rotating regime mediated by a transient intermediate state in a system with an axial aspect ratio of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}=5.26$ and a radius ratio of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}=0.905$. In this regime, flow visualization experiments and numerical simulations indicate the intermediate state corresponds to an aperiodic flow featuring interpenetrating spirals. Furthermore, the reverse transition out of turbulence leads first to the same intermediate state, which is now stable, before returning to an azimuthally symmetric laminar flow. Time-resolved tomographic particle image velocimetry is used to characterize the experimental flows; these measurements compare favourably to direct numerical simulations with axial boundary conditions matching those of the experiments.

JFM classification

Instability: Transition to turbulence Nonlinear Dynamical Systems: Bifurcation
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 892 , 10 June 2020 , A12
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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