Vortex-speed selection within the boundary-layer flow over a rotating sphere placed in an enforced axial flow

This paper furthers existing work into the instability mechanisms within the boundary-layer flow over a rotating sphere through the study of amplification rates within the convectively-unstable region. The onset of convective instability is associated with the experimentally observed onset of spiral vortices reported in the literature. Axial flow is found to stabilize the boundary layer by both delaying the onset of convective instability at all latitudes and also by significantly reducing the spatial amplification rates. We find that the type II (streamline curvature) mode becomes increasingly amplified with respect to the type I (crossflow) mode and is therefore likely to be selected in practice for sufficiently high axial flow rates. Furthermore, in experiments where special care is taken to remove all surface roughness, we predict that vortices will rotate at around 75% of the local surface speed. This is consistent with the experimental observations of Kobayashi & Arai who note a speed of around 76% under particular experimental conditions. These predictions are entirely consistent with related work on the rotating-disk and cone boundary layers.