THE STUDY OF TAYLOR COUETTE FLOW WITH LONGITUDINAL CORRUGATED SURFACES

Abstract

This study investigates the wide gap (radius ratio = 0.5, where radius ratio = radius of inner cylinder/radius of the outer cylinder) Taylor Couette flow (TCF) with the corrugated surfaces on the stationary outer cylinder and a rotating smooth inner cylinder by solving three dimensional Navier-Stokes equation. The motivation of the present study is to explore the influence of corrugated surfaces on the flow structures and the variation of torque for a wider range of Reynolds number (Re) (60 to 650). Two types of longitudinal corrugated surfaces are considered; they are axial corrugated surface and helical corrugated surface. For both axial and helical corrugated surfaces, several three-dimensional unsteady flow regimes are observed with the axial secondary flow (flow along spanwise direction). The emergence of axial secondary flow influences torque to be lower in corrugated surfaces than that of smooth surface. This finding may play an important role in drag reduction studies.