On wavy instabilities of the Taylor-vortex flow between corotating cylinders

Abstract

At least four wavy instabilities are found numerically by analysing the linear stability of Taylor-vortex flow (TVF) in the limit of a small gap between two concentric cylinders which rotate differentially in the same direction. Two of the wavy instabilities, including the one leading to conventional wavy vortex (WVF), have the same axial wavelength as TVF at the onset of instability, while the other two are characterized by subharmonic modes with axial wavelengths twice as long as those of TVF. The two subharmonic instabilities appear to correspond to the wavy-inflow-boundary flow (WIB) and the wavy-outflow-boundary flow (WOB) observed in the experiment of Andereck, Liu & Swinney (1986). The phase velocities, measured in the rotating frame of reference, of all the wavy instabilities are non-zero at the onset except that the phase velocity of WVF vanishes in the region where the average rotation rate Ω of the cylinders is small. By using this simple bifurcation property of WVF for small Ω, time-independent finite-amplitude non-axisymmetric solution branches bifurcating from TVF are followed numerically. The most interesting findings are that some of the solution branches cross the line Ω = 0, producing three-dimensional nonlinear solutions in plane Couette flow.