Defect-mediated turbulence in bubbly Taylor-Couette flow

Abstract

We investigate experimentally the defect-mediated turbulence (DMT) which is induced by bubbles injection in a Taylor-Couette flow when the inner cylinder is rotating while the outer cylinder is fixed. Bubbles of 1.2 mm in diameter are injected at the bottom of a Taylor-Couette device of radii ratio equal to 0.91. The tangential Reynolds number range is [2 200, 19 300] and the air injection rate varies up to 800 ml/min. For these conditions of the experiments, bubbles are trapped in the gap by the Taylor vortices and arranged as patterns (toroidal, wavy toroidal, spirals, and wavy spirals). Visualizations of the bubble patterns were carried out. When decreasing the Reynolds number or increasing the air injection rate, spiral and toroidal patterns can coexist in a composite flow. Defects occur in the bubble’s patterns (merging or splitting of the Taylor vortex pairs). By analyzing the space-time diagram of bubbles patterns and their complex demodulation, we highlight different regimes and transitions in the DMT of the bubbly Taylor-Couette flow. The control parameter of the transitions is the air volumetric fraction, which evolves as the ratio between the axial injection Reynolds number and the tangential Reynolds number. By increasing the air volumetric fraction, the defects in the DMT flows are classified as three flow regimes: (i) structured composite flow where the defects are periodic in space and time, (ii) intermittency defects chaos where the defects zones alternate randomly with the patterns in time and space, and (iii) developed defects chaos with a large defects density. The statistical properties of these three regimes of the DMT are analyzed in the framework of the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation.