TRANSITION FROM CIRCULAR COUETTE-FLOW TO TAYLOR VORTEX FLOW IN DILUTE AND SEMICONCENTRATED SUSPENSIONS OF STIFF FIBERS

We report the results of a theoretical study of the stability of a Couette flow of dilute and concentrated suspensions of stiff fibers. The Ericksen anisotropic fluid rheological equation of state in the wide-gap situation is used to compute the critical Taylor number and wavenumber of the suspension as a function of the aspect ratio of the fibers and the gap-width in the dilute case; and as a function of the volumic concentration of the fibers, their density and the gap-width in the semi-concentrated case.