Time-dependent Taylor vortices in wide-gap spherical Couette flow

Motivated by recent experimental work, I numerically investigated the possibility of obtaining Taylor vortices in a spherical shell of aspect ratio 0.336. It is found that Taylor vortices can exist for Reynolds numbers in the range 415 less than or equal to Re less than or equal to 2040. With increasing Reynolds number, the initially equatorially symmetric vortices become asymmetric at Re = 1390. Increasing Re still further, these asymmetric vortices become lime dependent at Re = 1940, followed by a period-doubling cascade to chaos at Re = 2035. For Re > 2040 the chaotic solution collapses back to the basic state having no Taylor vortices. [S0031-9007(98)07310-4].