Bubble capture and migration in Couette–Taylor flow

Abstract

 Bubble capture and migration under the effect of organized structures in weak turbulent Couette–Taylor flow between two concentric cylinders, the inner one rotating, has been investigated. Bubbles generated at the free surface for large enough angular velocities are sucked into the flow by the upper organized structures. Then they migrate progressively from top to bottom by jumping from cell to cell. With an upper solid stationary wall instead of the free surface, injected bubbles are trapped by the coherent vortices beyond a critical Taylor number. However, in this situation there is no migration mechanism carrying the bubbles from top to bottom. This particular migration and capture process, able to act against the forces of buoyancy, has been investigated by perturbing the flow by adding a vertical plate protruding from the inner surface of the solid stationary wall. The perturbation so introduced causes the deformation of the upper coherent structures and reinstalls the migration of the bubbles.