Viscous Heating and the Stability of Newtonian and Viscoelastic Taylor-Couette Flows

James M. White; Susan J. Muller

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.5130

Viscous Heating and the Stability of Newtonian and Viscoelastic Taylor-Couette Flows

James M. White and Susan J. Muller

Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 5130 – Published 29 May 2000

Abstract

The effects of viscous heating on the stability of Taylor-Couette flow were investigated through flow visualization experiments for Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids. For highly viscous Newtonian fluids, viscous heating drives a transition to a new, oscillatory mode of instability at a critical Reynolds number significantly below that at which the inertial transition is observed in isothermal flows. The effects of viscous heating may explain the discrepancies between the observed and predicted critical conditions and the symmetry of the disturbance flow for viscoelastic instabilities.

Received 24 January 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.5130

Authors & Affiliations

James M. White and Susan J. Muller

Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California
and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720