LAUSR

In this work, we develop a numerical strategy for analyzing the flows of an incompressible fluid in the gap between an arbitrarily shaped inner boundary that rotates inside a circular outer boundary. Such flows occur very commonly in turbomachinery applications. The numerical strategy is based on a noninertial frame of reference that is fixed to the rotating inner boundary so that Coriolis and angular acceleration effects have to be accounted for in its development. Since this strategy is based on a fixed mesh, it is much more economical and accurate than a general arbitrary Eulerian–Lagrangian strategy, which would typically require remeshing. In addition, we also conduct a numerical study for circular Couette flow with varying angular speed of the inner cylinder in an inertial frame of reference; such a study may prove useful in validating a theoretical stability analysis which currently seems to have been carried out only for the case of constant angular speed.