THE EFFECT OF A CORIOLIS-FORCE ON TAYLOR-COUETTE FLOW

Taylor-Couette flow subject to a Coriolis force is studied experimentally and numerically. In the experiment, the Couette apparatus is mounted on a turntable with the axis of the cylinders orthogonal to the rotation vector of the turntable. The Coriolis force stabilizes the fluid against the onset of Taylor vortices and alters the velocity fields, both above and below the transition from the initial flow. At small dimensionless turntable frequencies-OMEGA, the transition yields time-independent Taylor vortices which are tilted with respect to the cylinder axis. At larger OMEGA there is a direct transition to turbulence. We determine the first-order correction to the classical Couette initial flow, to account for the effects of the Coriolis force, by expanding in powers of OMEGA. We present numerical results for the axial velocity (the only nonvanishing correction term to order OMEGA) in the infinite-cylinder approximation.