A Purely Elastic Transition in Taylor-Couette Flow

Experimental evidence of a non-inertial, cellular instability in the Taylor-Couette flow of a viscoelastic fluid is presented. A linear stability analysis for an Oldroyd-B fluid, which is successful in describing many features of the experimental fluid, quantitatively predicts the critical Deborah number, De sub c, at which the instability is observed. The dependence of De sub c on the value of the dimensionless gap between the cylinders is also determines.