Viscous stress tensor and stability of laminar contravortical flows

Introduction: coaxial layers in contravortical flows rotate in the opposite directions. This determines their complicated spatial structure. The relevance of the subject is in the uniquely effective mixing of the moving medium. This property has a great potential of application from microbiology and missile building for obtaining highly dispersed mixtures to heat engineering for increasing the intensity of heat transfer. However, contravortical flows have a high degree of hydrodynamic instability. This hinders effective development of these technologies. Contravortical flows are observed behind Francis hydroturbines, whose derated operation causes modes with a significant increase of hydraulic unit vibrations up to destruction of the units. The purpose of the study is to identify physical laws of the contravortical flow hydrodynamics, common for both laminar and turbulent fluid flow modes. Materials and methods: theoretical analysis of the viscous stress tensor and local stability zones of contravortical laminar flows. Results: the article provides a mathematical description of the tensor of viscous tangential (τij) and normal (σii) stresses as well as local stability zones of the flow according to Rayleigh (Ra) and Richardson (Ri) criteria. The graphs of the radial-axial distributions of the viscous stress components are given, local stability zones are shown and the point of “vortex breakdown” is indicated. The solutions are obtained in the form of Fourier – Bessel series. The hydrodynamic structure of the flow is analysed. Conclusions: it is established that the most significant viscous stresses are observed at the beginning of the interaction zone of contrarotating layers. It is established that the areas with the most unstable flow are localized in the flow vortex core. Three zones can be distinguished in the vortex core: a zone of weak instability with local Richardson numbers to Ri = –1, passing into a zone of flow destabilization with high negative values of Richardson numbers Ri = –10 to –100, in turn, transforming into a zone with rapidly increasing instability up to Ri = –1000. This is a zone of loss of flow stability, culminating in the “ortex breakdown”.