Shear-Driven Flow in an Elliptical Enclosure Generated by an Inner Rotating Circular Cylinder

Abstract

Shear-driven flow between a rotating cylinder and a stationary elliptical enclosure is studied in this paper. The two-dimensional time-dependent Navier Stokes equations are solved using a meshless method where interpolations are done with Polyharmonic Spline Radial Basis Functions (PHS-RBF). The fluid flow is analyzed for various aspect ratios of the ellipse and eccentric placements of the inner cylinder. Contour plots of vorticity with streamlines, plots of non-dimensional torque, and the angle of eye of the primary vortex are presented in the paper for Reynolds numbers between 200 to 2000.Formation of Moffat like vortices in the wide-gap region of the model is observed and some benchmark data are provided for various cases that are simulated.