Structural Drag Reduction in Taylor-Couette Flow

Abstract

Energy consumption of fluid machinery, especially for canned motor pump that rotates in water, increases sharply as radius or speed increases. It not only leads to low efficiency of the pump, but also probably suppresses heat transfer between stator winding and water. According to researches on Taylor-Couette flow, dimensionless torque decreases obviously when both cylinders rotate in certain speed ratio. It inspires us to propose a structural design to realizing drag reduction in Taylor-Couette flow system, which has simple structure but huge potential.