Abstract EN:

The Taylor-Couette system has been investigated experimentally and numerically in great detail since Taylor’s pioneering work in 1923. Most of the studies dedicated to this topic considered cavities of small aspect ratio. They have particularly focused on the rotor-stator configuration with a fixed outer cylinder. The rotation of the outer cylinder in addition to that of the inner cylinder results in more complex vortical structures; furthermore decreasing the aspect ratio changes the transition to turbulence. These cases, that have not been much studied, are the topic of this work. We use 3D direct numerical simulation based on a spectral approximation that has been shown to be efficient for the complex development of rotating flows with walls. The method is coupled to efficient algorithms. In the couter-rotating case, we found complex spiral and wavy vortex flows. DNS allowed a precise analysis the endwalls effect and of space-and-time behaviour of the vortical structures.