Rotating turbulence in a rotor/stator cavity at high Reynolds number

Abstract eng:
This communication reports an experimental investigation of a turbulent flow confined within a rotor/stator cavity at high Reynolds numbers. The experiments have been driven by changing both the rotation rates of the disk and the density of the working fluid (sulfur hexafluoride near its critical point) by imposing the operating temperature and pressure inside a thermalized and pressurized vessel. This original set-up allows to get Reynolds numbers as high as 2 107 with potential compressibility effects as the Mach number can reach 0.5. Pressure measurements reveal that the resulting fully turbulent flow shows both a direct and an inverse cascade in accordance with Kraichnan’s conjecture. For the highest Reynolds numbers, the spectra are however dominated by low-frequency oscillations involving large scale modes with azimuthal wavenumbers m = 1, 2, 3 and 4. We interpret these modes as acoustico-inertial modes for which we have calculated their dispersion relation as function of the Mach number.

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