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Polygons on a Rotating Fluid Surface
Open accessAbstract
We report a novel and spectacular instability of a fluid surface in a rotating system. In a flow driven by rotating the bottom plate of a partially filled, stationary cylindrical container, the shape of the free surface can spontaneously break the axial symmetry and assume the form of a polygon rotating rigidly with a speed different from that of the plate. With water, we have observed polygons with up to 6 corners. It has been known for many years that such flows are prone to symmetry breaking, but apparently the polygonal surface shapes have never been observed. The creation of rotating internal waves in a similar setup was observed for much lower rotation rates, where the free surface remains essentially flat [J. M. Lopez, J. Fluid Mech. 502, 99 (2004). We speculate that the instability is caused by the strong azimuthal shear due to the stationary walls and that it is triggered by minute wobbling of the rotating plate.
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“Their results appear slightly shifted such that the polygonal vortices with more corners appeared for the same combination of the non-dimensional parameters: polygonal vortices with fewer corners observed in the other works.”
From Various phenomena on a water vortex in a cylindrical tank over a rotating bottom (2014) · cites this paper as Jansson et al (2006)
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“Our observation of polygonal vortices at H = 3-10 cm is consistent with the results of Vatistas (1990), Vatistas et al (2008), andJansson et al (2006) and we observed a similar regime of transitions to those found in these studies.”
From Various phenomena on a water vortex in a cylindrical tank over a rotating bottom (2014) · cites this paper as Jansson et al (2006)
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“The more detailed dependence on H and ω is also consistent with Jansson et al (2006); the number of corners of the polygon increases with ω, and the value of ω where the transition occurs is roughly proportional to H.”
From Various phenomena on a water vortex in a cylindrical tank over a rotating bottom (2014) · cites this paper as Jansson et al (2006)
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“Comparison of figures 5 and 6 suggests that the phase diagrams of the polygonal vortices are consistent both qualitatively and quantitatively, with the exception of the results of Jansson et al (2006) using a smaller container of radius 131 mm.”
From Various phenomena on a water vortex in a cylindrical tank over a rotating bottom (2014) · cites this paper as Jansson et al (2006)
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Research works printed but not linked: 17
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“Linear dependence between the initial height and the limit frequencies for each range reported in [6] was observed in [7].”
BackgroundResultInfluentialSelf‐Organized Hexagon‐Shaped Jets in Rotating Fluid Experiments
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Metadata
- Authors
- Jansson, T. R. N., Haspang, M. P., Jensen, K. H., Hersen, P., & Bohr, T.
- Affiliations
- University of Copenhagen (DK)
- Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes (FR)
- Technical University of Denmark (DK)
- Venue
- Physical Review Letters
- Publisher
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Published
- 2006-05-03
- Volume
- 96
- Issue
- 17
- Pages
- 174502-174502
- ISSN
- 0031-9007 (ISSN-L)
- 1079-7114
- OpenAlex
- W1989998409
- Cited by
- 124
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 6.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Physical Review Letters (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- CERN Document Server (European Organization for Nuclear Research) (submittedVersion)
- Technical University of Denmark, DTU Orbit (Technical University of Denmark, DTU) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Computational Mechanics › Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Computational Mechanics › Fluid Dynamics and Thin Films
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Computational Mechanics › Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer
- Keywords
- rotating fluids, symmetry breaking, free surface instability, rotating plate, azimuthal shear, cylindrical container
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