High Reynolds Number Flow Between Rotating Coaxial Disks: A Numerical Experiment

Abstract

A pair of nonlinear ordinary differential equations that arise in the study of fluid flow between rotating coaxial disks is studied numerically. Collocation at Guassian points is used to find approximate solutions to these equations for different values of the ratio of the angular velocity of one disk to the other. Recently J.B. McLeod and S.V. Parter have proved rigorous analytic results for the case when the disks rotate with equal and opposite angular velocity. A comparison between their analytic results and the numerical results is presented for this case.