Superposition of Traveling Waves in the Circular Couette System

Abstract

Experiments have been performed on the circular Couette system that reveal the existence of two simultaneous traveling azimuthal waves in a highly nonlinear fluid flow. These waves can have the same or different wave numbers, but they are nearly dispersionless. Flow visualization, scattering intensity, and Doppler velocimetry techniques were used, and intensity measurements were made in both laboratory and rotating reference frames.