Dynamics and evolution of Turbulent Taylor rolls

Abstract

In many shear- and pressure-driven wall-bounded turbulent flows secondary motions spontaneously develop and their interaction with the main flow alters the overall large-scale features and transfer properties. Taylor-Couette flow, the fluid motion developing in the gap between two concentric cylinders rotating at different angular velocity, is not an exception, and toroidal Taylor rolls have been observed from the early development of the flow up to the fully turbulent regime. In this manuscript we show that under the generic name of ``Taylor rolls'' there is a wide variety of structures that differ for the vorticity distribution within the cores, the way they are driven and their effects on the mean flow. We relate the rolls at high Reynolds numbers not to centrifugal instabilities, but to a combination of shear and anti-cyclonic rotation, showing that they are preserved in the limit of vanishing curvature and can be better understood as a pinned cycle which shows similar characteristics as the self-sustained process of shear flows. By analyzing the effect of the computational domain size, we show that this pinning is not a product of numerics, and that the position of the rolls is governed by a random process with the space and time variations depending on domain size.

arXiv commentSubmitted to JFM

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• Controlling secondary flows in Taylor-Couette flow using stress-free boundary conditions
• On high Taylor number Taylor vortices
• Lift-up and streak waviness drive the self-sustained process in wall-bounded transition to turbulence
• Large-scale structures in high Reynolds number rotating Waleffe flow
• Exploring the origin of Turbulent Taylor rolls
• Taylor rolls on tour: Slow drift of turbulent large-scale structures in flows with continuous symmetries
• Closing the loop: nonlinear Taylor vortex flow through the lens of resolvent analysis