Experiments on the stability of viscous flow between rotating cylinders - VI. Finite-amplitude experiments

The ion technique is applied to a variety of experiments in Couette flow: determination of the critical Taylor number; determination of wavenumber and waveform of the vortices; establishment of the laws that the square of the amplitude and the amplification factor both vary as the difference between the Taylor number and the critical Taylor number; and finally certain studies of the growth and decay of vortices as the Taylor number is changed. The experimental data are compared with the results of integration of the exact equations for the linear stability problem by means of a high-speed computer. These theo­retical values were obtained by P. H. Roberts and are presented in an appendix to this paper.