Elasto-Rotational Instability in Couette-Taylor Flows of Visco-Elastic Fluids
ORAL
Abstract
We discuss the so-called ``elasto-rotational'' instability of visco-elastic polymer fluids in a Couette-Taylor geometry. We study under what conditions (viscosity and relaxation time of the polymer fluid, velocity profile of the Couette-Taylor flow) this instability is analogous to the magnetorotational instability that plays a fundamental role in astrophysical accretion disks.
*Supported by Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, by the NSF Center for Magnetic Self-Organization in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas, at UW Madison, and by the Deparment of Energy under grants: DE-FG02-07ER54932 and DE-SC0001794.
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