Flow in a partially filled rotating cylinder

Axial flow in a rapidly rotating cylinder, partially filled with a viscous, incompressible fluid is measured with a laser-Doppler velocimeter. The cylinder has a vertical axis of rotation, and the axial circulation is induced by rotating a coaxially mounted disk at the top endcap slightly faster than the cylinder. The experimental results are compared with the predictions of a finite-difference model of the flow, and the correlation is qualitatively good.
The axial circulation in the fluid layer is confined primarily to E 1/3 shear layers along the lateral boundaries, where E is the Ekman number. The radial transport in the Ekman layers is essentially unaffected by the presence of the free surface. It will be shown that this leads to axial transport in an E 1/3 boundary layer along the free surface.