Numerical Simulations of Spherical Gap Flows

K. Buehler, and J. W. Louw
University of Applied Sciences Offenburg, Germany
Published in 2008

Rotating fluids are important in nature and technology. Many applications can be found in the field of meteorology and in rotating machinery.

This investigation concerns the application of the swirl flow application mode in COMSOL Multiphysics to simulate nonlinear aspects of flows within spherical geometries. The results show the non-uniqueness of the supercritical solutions and interesting aspects of the connected bifurcations.

A comparison of the results from the numerical simulations with the experiments in spherical gap flows shows a good agreement concerning the flow structure, bifurcations and existence ranges.

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