Analysis of quasi-steady acceleration in circular Couette flow

The effect of inner cylinder acceleration in the transition from circular Couette flow to Taylor vortex regime was numerically investigated. The solution of the eigenvalue problem when the Couette flow was perturbed allowed the determination of the relationship between the inner cylinder acceleration rate and the acceleration time duration expressed in terms of viscous diffusion time. The analysis of the numerical results also allowed the concept of quasi-steady acceleration in the Couette system to be qualitatively described.