Instrument: Taylor–Couette system

Instrument Short Name:
Instrument Description:

An apparatus composed of two vertically oriented, coaxial cylinders separated by a gap that contains seawater. During operation, the outer cylinder rotates at a prescribed speed causing relative motion between the cylinders and thereby shearing the seawater between them.

PI supplied instrument name:
Dataset-specific description

To generate turbulence intensities (quantified in terms of the energy dissipation rate, in units of Wkg−1) ranging from those found in open ocean waters to those arising on wave-battered coasts, we employed a Taylor–Couette cell [29], an apparatus composed of two vertically oriented, coaxial cylinders separated by a 3.5mm gap that contains seawater (described in greater detail in [1]). We held the stationary inner cylinder, and thus the water in the gap, at 19–21◦C by means of a circulating water stream from a temperature-controlled water bath passing through the cylinder’s interior. During operation, the outer cylinder rotated at a prescribed speed causing relative motion between the cylinders and thereby shearing the seawater between them. At rotation speeds employed for testing sand dollar larvae, the sheared flow was turbulent [1].

[1]Gaylord B, Hodin J, Ferner MC. 2013 Turbulent shear spurs settlement in larval sea urchins. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110, 6901–6906. (doi:10.1073/pnas.
1220680110)