Travelling Taylor vortices in closed systems

Travelling Taylor vortices between conical cylinders and a cone-cylinder co mbination are described. The flow results from a rotating inner cone and an outer shell at rest. Due to different centrifugal forces on the cone's sur face one obtains a three-dimensional laminar basic flow and regions of subc ritical and supercritical flows in the annulus. By some specific bifurcatio n sequences a rich variety of flow patterns occurs. The generated Taylor vo rtices can be steady or unsteady, toroidal or helical. Depending on differe nt initial and boundary conditions, toroidal or helical vortices travel thr ough a closed system. Furthermore, combinations of steady toroidal and unst eady helical vortices are possible. The influence of the governing paramete rs is discussed.