Taylor-Vortex Flow: A Dynamical System

Taylor-vortex flows have been studied over a period of more than sixty years; they occur between two concentric circular cylinders, for example, when the inner cylinder rotates and the outer is at rest, and the flow takes on a toroidal vortex form with periodicity or quasi-periodicity along the axis. Complex variations on this simple description occur when the angular speed is raised, or when the length of the apparatus is reduced. A rather special form of turbulence can occur, and there may be some relation to chaos in the sense of ordinary differential equations as a dynamical system. The experimental and theoretical evidence concerned with these phenomena is discussed.