Flows Over Rotating Disks and Cones

Rotating-disk flows were first considered by von Kármán in a seminal paper in 1921, where boundary layers in general were discussed and, in two of the nine sections, results for the laminar and turbulent boundary layers over a rotating disk were presented. It was not until in 1955 that flow visualization discovered the existence of stationary cross-flow vortices on the disk prior to the transition to turbulence. The rotating disk can be seen as a special case of rotating cones, and recent research has shown that broad cones behave similarly to disks, whereas sharp cones are susceptible to a different type of instability. Here, we provide a review of the major developments since von Kármán's work from 100 years ago, regarding instability, transition, and turbulence in the boundary layers, and we include some analysis not previously published.Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, Volume 56 is January 2024. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.