# How would air flow inside a toroidal space station

The torus-shaped rotating space station, familiar from science fiction, is a way to produce artificial gravity in space. Would the fluid dynamics of gas in a rotating torus cause a person standing inside to notice any airflow?

It's noted (for example Artificial gravity on rotating spaceship?) that inside such a space station the air would rotate with the structure. It's clear that this rotation would be the main motion of the air. however would the variation in centrifugal force or other properties of fluid flow inside a torus cause a secondary motion So that a person standing inside the torus would experience this secondary motion as wind.

Several websites mention fluid flow, for example, Wikipedia notes that fluids can freely move in a vortex. And other sites deal with this https://www.gamedev.net/topic/680801-flying-inside-a-rotating-torus-space-station-artificial-gravity/ mentions "There will be airflow caused by the rotating torus. Laminar flow, oh the joy. That means fastest flow near the floor with quadratic or something falloff". I have also unsuccessfully tried googling for "gas flow inside a torus"

• Unfortunately, it flushes right out the back. That's how the Federation lost NCC-1700. – Ambrose Swasey Feb 1 '17 at 19:30
• Taylor-Couette flow and associated instabilities may interest you. – Deep Feb 2 '17 at 4:34
• Vaguely related: physics.stackexchange.com/q/214038/123208 which discusses wind in A. C. Clarke's Rama spacecraft, a large rotating cylinder. – PM 2Ring Oct 1 at 5:50

• I'm not sure what you mean by those "moving plates", but assuming you are talking about flow in a plane channel, if both plates move at the same constant speed, you can simply transform into a moving coordinate system, in which you have no motion. If the plates are moving at different speeds, you'll get plane Couette flow, with a linear velocity profile for laminar flow, if the Reynolds number $U h/\nu$ (with $U$ velocity difference between the plates, $h$ distance between the plates, $\nu$ kinematic viscosity of the fluid) is less than about 350 or so. – Pirx Feb 1 '17 at 20:31