The almost-rigid rotation of viscous fluid between concentric spheres

Abstract

Two concentric spheres are supposed to rotate about the same axis with almost the same angular velocity, so that the viscous stresses over the surfaces of the spheres induce a flow which may be represented by a small perturbation superimposed upon a rigid body rotation of the fluid as a whole. The governing equations are therefore linearized in the magnitude of the perturbation, and it appears that the validity of this linearization is independent of the Reynolds number of the primary rotation. Attention is then restricted to the case in which the Reynolds number is large, the principal object of the note being to exemplify some of the properties of rotating systems at large Reynolds numbers in terms of a particularly simple mathematical model.

It is found that the cylindrical surface that touches the inner sphere (the axis being the axis of rotation) is a singular surface in which velocity gradients are very large. Everywhere outside this cylinder, the fluid rotates as a rigid body with the same angular velocity as the outer sphere. Inside the cylinder, the velocity distribution in the central (inviscid) core of the motion is shown to be determined by the velocity distribution in the boundary layers over the spheres, and explicit solutions are obtained for all these velocity distributions. The mechanics of the cylindrical shear layer itself is also discussed, though no explicit solution is obtained in this case.