Spin-up in a semicircular cylinder

This paper addresses the spin-up from rest of a free-surface fluid confined in a cylindrical container with a semicircular cross-section. The flow in the various stages of the spin-up process has been calculated numerically by using the finite-volume technique on a three-dimensional grid. Local grid refinement was applied in order to capture the effects of the boundary layer at the lateral boundaries and of the Ekman layer at the bottom. The numerical results agree very well with laboratory observations.