A numerical method for study of the unsteady viscous flow between two concentric rotating spheres (Q1346075)

A simple but very efficient numerical method based on the finite difference technique has been developed for solving time-dependent nonlinear flow problems. The governing equations of motion are discretized by a backward-time central-space scheme, whereby only the variables in the nonlinear terms other than the main variable of the transport equation are replaced with the corresponding values calculated previously. The resulting algebraic equations for each main variable are solved by directly applying the Gaussian algorithm altered by considering the sparse structure of the diagonal-banded coefficient matrix adequately. The method is applied to study the unsteady axisymmetric isothermal flow of an incompressible viscous fluid in a spherical shell with a stationary inner sphere and a rotating outer sphere.