The Taylor-Couette Flow: The Hydrodynamic Twin of Rayleigh-Bénard Convection

Abstract

There is a strong analogy between Rayleigh-Bénard convection and the Taylor-Couette system. This analogy is well known when dealing with the primary instability, and is based on the existence of an unstable stratification in both systems. We show that the analogy can be extended beyond the primary instability modes, to the weakly non-linear regime and even further to the fully turbulent one.