| Abstract: | The presented work deals with the instabilities that occur in the flow of a viscous fluid between axisymmetric cylinders with a rotating inner and stationary outer cylinder. The results of a numerical study of convective flows are presented. The inner cylinder is rotating and heated from within, while the outer cylinder is stationary and cooled outside. Stationary horizontal endplates are used to seal the annulus, forming an enclosure. The working fluid is silikon oil M3. The flow of oil was rendered visible by injecting aluminium powder. By increasing the Reynolds number with angular velocity of the driving inner cylinder, the flow bifurcates into different types of instabilities. Investigation was aimed to find the values of critical Reynolds and Rayleigh numbers corresponding to the critical speeds and temperature differences at which these instabilities set in. The three‐dimensional problem was modelled numerically using software package FLUENT in which discretization is performed by means of finite volume techniques. Computational grid was created in preprocessor Gambit. Numerical experiments are conducted to determine the interdependence between the heat transfer mechanism and the structure of secondary flows |
