Plane Couette - visualization

walls move at constant speed in opposite directions along x:
top towards the back of the cell
bottom towards the front; no-slip boundary conditions.
color indicates u(x,t), the steamwise speed of the fluid:
red indicates fluid being dragged away from the viewer by the top wall
blue towards
arrows indicate fluid velocity in the section plane
top wall, upper half of the fluid
cut away to show what happens inside
front/back, left/right sections
identical due to the streamwise / spanwise periodic boundary conditions
 
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[movie of plane couette flow]

3 sections are shown:

  • midplane velocity field [u,w](x,0,z,t), halfway between the upper and lower walls
  • spanwise/wall-normal velocity field [v,w](0,y,z,t), front section and back top section
  • streamwise/wall-normal velocity field [u,v](x,y,0,t), bottom right and top left section