Statistics of turbulent fluctuations in counter-rotating Taylor-Couette flows

TL;DR

This study investigates the velocity fluctuation statistics in turbulent Taylor-Couette flow with varying rotation rates, revealing weak dependence of structure function exponents on rotation ratio and identifying specific spectral scaling behaviors.

Contribution

It provides detailed experimental analysis of turbulence statistics in Taylor-Couette flow across different rotation ratios, including structure functions and power spectra, with new insights into the influence of rotation on turbulence.

Findings

Weak dependence of structure function exponents on rotation ratio

Clear -5/3 power spectral scaling for certain rotation ratios

No clear spectral scaling for pure inner cylinder rotation

Abstract

The statistics of velocity fluctuations of turbulent Taylor-Couette flow are examined. The rotation rate of the inner and outer cylinder are varied while keeping the Taylor number fixed to $1.49 \times 10^{12}$ ($\mathcal{O}(\text{Re})=10^6$). The azimuthal velocity component of the flow is measured using laser Doppler anemometry (LDA). For each experiment $5\times10^6$ datapoints are acquired and carefully analysed. Using extended self-similarity (ESS) \cite{ben93b} the longitudinal structure function exponents are extracted, and are found to weakly depend on the ratio of the rotation rates. For the case where only the inner cylinder rotates the results are in good agreement with results measured by Lewis and Swinney \cite{lew99} using hot-film anemometry. The power spectra shows clear -5/3 scaling for the intermediate angular velocity ratios $-\omega_o/\omega_i \in \{0.6, 0.8, 1.0\}$, roughly -5/3 scaling for $-\omega_o/\omega_i \in \{0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 2.0\}$, and no clear scaling law can be found for $-\omega_0/\omega_i = 0$ (inner cylinder rotation only); the local scaling exponent of the spectra has a strong frequency dependence. We relate these observations to the shape of the probability density function of the azimuthal velocity and the presence of a neutral line.