Study of the von Karman flow between coaxial corotating disks

We report an experimental study of the swirling flow generated in the gap between two coaxial corotating disks. We use a free geometry, i.e., unshrouded disks in air, with moderate to high Reynolds numbers. When the relative rotation rate is varied, transitions in the flow can be observed by global power measurement and are related to the geometry of the external recirculating flow. The mean flow is studied in details with hot-wire measurements using a boxcar-type averaging technique. It involves a single turbulent vortex undergoing a slow precession motion. We show that statistical properties of the turbulent fluctuations are affected by the dynamics of the mean flow, which also displays a correlation with the global power fluctuations. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.