Taylor–Couette instability

Summary

The Taylor–Couette instability is the instability of the steady circular flow of a viscous fluid between two coaxial rotating cylinders. When the inner cylinder turns fast enough compared with the outer one, the circular flow gives way to a new flow. The new flow is a stack of steady ring-shaped vortices, the Taylor vortices. G. I. Taylor computed the onset of this instability and confirmed it by experiment in 1923, an early success of linear hydrodynamic stability theory. It is driven by centrifugal forces and is a model problem for pattern formation and the route to turbulence.