Stability of Shear-Thinning Flow Between Rotating Cylinders

Author(s):  
Nariman Ashrafi

The effect of shear thinning on the stability of the Taylor-Couette flow (TCF) is explored for a Carreau-Bird fluid in the narrow-gap limit to simulate shear-dependent viscosity of lubricants. Here, a low-order dynamical system is obtained from the conservation of mass and momentum equations. In comparison with the Newtonian system, the present equations include additional nonlinear coupling in the velocity components through the viscosity. It is found that the critical Taylor number, corresponding to the loss of stability of the base (Couette) flow becomes lower s the shear-thinning effect increases. Similar to Newtonian fluids, there is an exchange of stability between the Couette and Taylor vortex flows. However, unlike the Newtonian model, the Taylor vortex cellular structure loses its stability in turn as the Taylor number reaches a second critical value. At this point, A Hopf bifurcation emerges, which exists only for shear-thinning fluids.

Author(s):  
Nariman Ashrafi ◽  
Habib Karimi Haghighi

The effects of nonlinearities on the stability are explored for shear thickening fluids in the narrow-gap limit of the Taylor-Couette flow. It is assumed that shear-thickening fluids behave exactly as opposite of shear thinning ones. A dynamical system is obtained from the conservation of mass and momentum equations which include nonlinear terms in velocity components due to the shear-dependent viscosity. It is found that the critical Taylor number, corresponding to the loss of stability of Couette flow becomes higher as the shear-thickening effects increases. Similar to the shear thinning case, the Taylor vortex structure emerges in the shear thickening flow, however they quickly disappear thus bringing the flow back to the purely azimuthal flow. Naturally, one expects shear thickening fluids to result in inverse dynamical behavior of shear thinning fluids. This study proves that this is not the case for every point on the bifurcation diagram.


Author(s):  
Nariman Ashrafi ◽  
Habib Karimi Haghighi

The effects of nonlinearities on the stability are explored for shear thickening fluids in the narrow-gap limit of the Taylor-Couette flow. A dynamical system is obtained from the conservation of mass and momentum equations which include nonlinear terms in velocity components due to the shear-dependent viscosity. It is found that the critical Taylor number, corresponding to the loss of stability of Couette flow becomes higher as the shear-thickening effects increases. Similar to the shear thinning case, the Taylor vortex structure emerges in the shear thickening flow; however they quickly disappear thus bringing the flow back to the purely azimuthal flow. Naturally, one expects shear thickening fluids to result in inverse dynamical behavior of shear thinning fluids. This study proves that this is not the case for every point on the bifurcation diagram.


Author(s):  
Nariman Ashrafi

The effect of shear thinning on the stability of the Taylor-Couette flow (TCF) is explored for a Carreau-Bird fluid in the narrow-gap limit to simulate journal bearings in general. Also considered is the changing eccentricity to cover a wide range of applied situations such as bearings and even articulation of human joints. Here, a low-order dynamical system is obtained from the conservation of mass and momentum equations. In comparison with the Newtonian system, the present equations include additional nonlinear coupling in the velocity components through the viscosity. It is found that the critical Taylor number, corresponding to the loss of stability of the base (Couette) flow becomes lower s the shear-thinning effect increases. Similar to Newtonian fluids, there is an exchange of stability between the Couette and Taylor vortex flows. However, unlike the Newtonian model, the Taylor vortex cellular structure loses its stability in turn as the Taylor number reaches a critical value. At this point, A Hopf bifurcation emerges, which exists only for shear-thinning fluids. Variation of stresses in the narrow gap has been evaluated with significant applications in the non-Newtonian lubricant.


2012 ◽  
Vol 183-184 ◽  
pp. 37-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brahim Alibenyahia ◽  
Cécile Lemaitre ◽  
Chérif Nouar ◽  
Noureddine Ait-Messaoudene

2011 ◽  
Vol 676 ◽  
pp. 145-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. LIU ◽  
Q. S. LIU

In this paper, we study the linear stability of a plane Couette flow of a power-law fluid. The influence of shear-thinning effect on the stability is investigated using the classical eigenvalue analysis, the energy method and the non-modal stability theory. For the plane Couette flow, there is no stratification of viscosity. Thus, for the stability problem the stress tensor is anisotropic aligned with the strain rate perturbation. The results of the eigenvalue analysis and the energy method show that the shear-thinning effect is destabilizing. We focus on the effect of non-Newtonian viscosity on the transition from laminar flow towards turbulence in the framework of non-modal stability theory. Response to external excitations and initial conditions has been studied by examining the ε-pseudospectrum and the transient energy growth. For both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids, it is found that there can be a rather large transient growth even though the linear operator of the Couette flow has no unstable eigenvalue. The results show that shear-thinning significantly increases the amplitude of response to external excitations and initial conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 933 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Topayev ◽  
C. Nouar ◽  
J. Dusek

The stability of the Taylor vortex flow in Newtonian and shear-thinning fluids is investigated in the case of a wide gap Taylor–Couette system. The considered radius ratio is $\eta = R_1/R_2=0.4$ . The aspect ratio (length over the gap width) of experimental configuration is 32. Flow visualization and measurements of two-dimensional flow fields with particle image velocimetry are performed in a glycerol aqueous solution (Newtonian fluid) and in xanthan gum aqueous solutions (shear-thinning fluids). The experiments are accompanied by axisymmetric numerical simulations of Taylor–Couette flow in the same gap of a Newtonian and a purely viscous shear-thinning fluid described by the Carreau model. The experimentally observed critical Reynolds and wavenumbers at the onset of Taylor vortices are in very good agreement with that obtained from a linear theory assuming a purely viscous shear-thinning fluid and infinitely long cylinders. They are not affected by the viscoelasticity of the used fluids. For the Newtonian fluid, the Taylor vortex flow (TVF) regime is found to bifurcate into a wavy vortex flow with a high frequency and low amplitude of axial oscillations of the vortices at ${Re} = 5.28 \, {Re}_c$ . At ${Re} = 6.9 \, {Re}_c$ , the frequency of oscillations decreases and the amplitude increases abruptly. For the shear-thinning fluids the secondary instability conserves axisymmetry. The latter is characterized by an instability of the array of vortices leading to a continuous sequence of creation and merging of vortex pairs. Axisymmetric numerical simulations reproduce qualitatively very well the experimentally observed flow behaviour.


Author(s):  
Abdelkrim Merah ◽  
Ridha Kelaiaia ◽  
Faiza Mokhtari

Abstract The Taylor-Couette flow between two rotating coaxial cylinders remains an ideal tool for understanding the mechanism of the transition from laminar to turbulent regime in rotating flow for the scientific community. We present for different Taylor numbers a set of three-dimensional numerical investigations of the stability and transition from Couette flow to Taylor vortex regime of a viscous incompressible fluid (liquid sodium) between two concentric cylinders with the inner one rotating and the outer one at rest. We seek the onset of the first instability and we compare the obtained results for different velocity rates. We calculate the corresponding Taylor number in order to show its effect on flow patterns and pressure field.


1966 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Beard ◽  
M. H. Davies ◽  
K. Walters

Consideration is given to the possibility of overstability in the Couette flow of viscous and elastico-viscous liquids. The relevant linear perturbation equations are solved numerically using an initial-value technique. It is shown that over-stability is not possible in the case of Newtonian liquids for the cases considered. In contrast, overstability is to be expected in the case of moderately-elastic Maxwell liquids. The Taylor number associated with the overstable mode decreases steadily as the amount of elasticity in the liquid increases, and it is concluded that highly elastic Maxwell liquids can be very unstable indeed.


1972 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. Diprima ◽  
J. T. Stuart

In this paper the linear stability of the flow between two long eccentric rotating circular cylinders is considered. The problem, which is of interest in lubrication technology, is an extension of the classical Taylor problem for concentric cylinders. The basic flow has components in the radial and azimuthal directions and depends on both of these co-ordinates. As a consequence the linearized stability equations arepartial differential equationsrather than ordinary differential equations. Thus standard methods of stability theory are not immediately useful. However, there are two small parameters in the problem, namely δ, the clearance ratio, and ε, the eccentricity. By letting these parameters tend to zero in such a way that δ½ is proportional to ε, a global solution to the stability problem is obtained without recourse to the concept of ‘local instability’, or ‘parallel-flow’ approximation, so commonly used in boundary-layer stability theory. It is found that the predictions of the present theory are at variance with what is given by a ‘local’ theory. First, the Taylor-vortex amplitude is found to be largest at about 90° downstream of the region of ‘maximum local instability’. This result is given support by some experimental observations of Vohr (1968) with δ = 0·1 and ε = 0·475, which yield a corresponding angle of about 50°. Second, the critical Taylor number rises with ε, rather than initially decreasing with ε as predicted by local stability theory using the criteria of maximum local instability. The present prediction of the critical Taylor number agrees well with Vohr's experiments for ε up to about 0·5 when δ = 0·01 and for ε up to about 0·2 when δ = 0.1.


2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Topayev ◽  
C. Nouar ◽  
D. Bernardin ◽  
A. Neveu ◽  
S. A. Bahrani

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