CALCULATION OF TURBULENT-FLOW FOR AN ENCLOSED ROTATING CONE

Prediction of the flow in the cavity between a rotating cone and an ou ter stationary cone with and without throughflow is considered. A mome ntum-integral method and a finite difference method for solution of th e Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with a mixing-length model of turbulence are applied. These two methods have previously been val idated for flow between corotating and rotor-stator disk systems, but have not been properly tested for conical systems. Both methods have b een evaluated by comparing predictions with the experimental measureme nts of other workers. There is good agreement for cone half-angles gre ater than or equal to 60 deg but discrepancies are evident for smaller angles. ''Taylor-type'' vortices, the existence of which has been pos tulated by other workers and which are not captured by the present ste ady, axisymmetric models, may contribute to these discrepancies.