Torque reduction in Taylor–Couette flows subject to an axial pressure gradient

The paper investigates the phenomena occurring in a Taylor–Couette flow system subject to a steady axial pressure gradient in a small envelope of the Taylor–Reynolds state space under transitional regimes. A remarkable net power reduction necessary to simultaneously drive the two flows compared to that required to drive the Taylor–Couette flow alone is documented under non-trivial conditions. The energy transfer process characterizing the large-scale coherent structures is investigated by processing a set of statistically independent realizations obtained from direct numerical simulation. The analysis is conducted with an incompressible three-dimensional Navier–Stokes flow solver employing a spectral representation of the unknowns.