Computation of the flow between two rotating coaxial disks: multiplicity of steady-state solutions

Abstract

A numerical investigation of the problem of rotating disks is made using the Newton-Raphson and continuation methods. The numerical analysis of the problem was performed for a sequence of values of the Reynolds number R and the ratio of angular velocities of both disks s. It was shown that for higher values of the Reynolds number it is necessary to use a large number of grid points. Continuation of the solution with respect to the parameter s indicated that a number of branches may exist. A detailed discussion for three selected values of s (s = -1, s = 0, s = 1) is presented together with a detailed comparison of our calculations with results already published in the literature.