Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 May 2011
The flow field of an incompressible viscous fluid in a precessing sphere is investigated by the asymptotic analysis for large Reynolds numbers and small Poincaré numbers. The long-standing unsolved equation (Roberts & Stewartson Astrophys. J., vol. 137, 1963, p. 777) for the velocity in the critical region of the boundary layer is solved for the first time in the literature, which enables us to describe explicitly the structure of the conical shear layers spawned from the critical regions into the interior inviscid region. Most of the flux between the boundary layer and the interior is taking place through these conical shear layers. The velocity field in the whole sphere, expanded in a power series of the Poincaré number, is quantitatively determined up to the first order, leaving the solid-body-rotation component to the next-order analysis.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.