Abstract: | We investigate the spinup from rest of two immiscible fluids of different densities and kinematic viscosities in a vertically mounted cylinder. Our attention is restricted to small internal rotational Froude numbers, in which case the interface remains essentially horizontal. By requiring small enough Ekman numbers, Wedemeyer's (1964) approximation may be used to obtain partial differential equations describing the inward convection and diffusion of the azimuthal velocity in both layers. Solutions are found illustrating the effects of varying the density, viscosity, and height of each layer. Qualitative agreement with experiment is reported. |