In this experimental note, we consider the centrifugal instability of a laminar shear layer, generated by the impulsive start of the rotation of a circular solid cylinder about its vertical axis immersed in a linearly stratified fluid. The flow is determined by the Reynolds number, Re, based on the cylinder rotation rate and the cylinder radius, and the Froude number, F r , represented by the ratio of the rotation frequency Ω over the buoyancy frequency N. The onset of the instability starts when the boundary layer reaches a certain thickness. We show for this boundary layer that there is a transition from the centrifugally unstable regime to a wave-like regime at Fr ≈ 1 and a stable flow below a critical Reynolds number. We focus on the centrifugally unstable regime F r 1, for which the onset time and wavelength are predicted by scaling laws that depend on the Reynolds number. Agreement with the theoretical prediction of Kim and Choi ["The onset of instability in the flow induced by an impulsively started rotating cylinder," Chem. Eng. Sci. 60, 599-608 (2005)] in a homogeneous fluid confirms that the instability of this boundary layer is not modified by the presence of stratification. These results therefore show that the centrifugal instability of the spin-up boundary is dominated by inertial motions, suggesting that close lateral boundaries, as in thin-gap stratified Taylor-Couette flow, increase the effects of buoyancy on the instability and wavelength.
Quantitative measurements of sound due to swirl-nozzle interaction are presented for the first time. In the experiment a swirl structure was generated by means of tangential injection into a steady swirl-free flow upstream from a choked convergent-divergent nozzle. Ingestion of swirl by the choked nozzle caused a mass-flow rate change, which resulted in a downstream measured acoustic response. The amplitude of this acoustic response was found to be proportional to the square of the tangential mass-flow rate used to generate swirl. This was, assuming that the upstream generated swirl intensity is proportional to the tangential injection mass-flow rate, predicted by a previously published quasi-steady model for the swirl-nozzle interaction
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