A cylindrical container partially filled with a liquid in an orbital shaking motion, i.e., in circular translation with fixed orientation with respect to an inertial frame of reference, generates, along with a rotating sloshing wave, a mean flow rotating in the same direction as the wave. Here we investigate experimentally the structure and the scaling of the wave flow and the Lagrangian mean flow in the weakly nonlinear regime, for small forcing amplitude and for forcing frequency far from the resonance, using conventional and stroboscopic particle image velocimetry. The Lagrangian mean flow is composed of a strong global rotation near the center and a nontrivial pattern of poloidal recirculation vortices of weaker amplitude, mostly active near the contact line. The global rotation near the center is robust with respect to changes in viscosity and forcing frequency, and its amplitude compares well with the predicted Stokes drift for an inviscid rotating sloshing wave. On the other hand, the spatial structure of the poloidal vortices shows strong variation with viscosity and forcing frequency, suggesting that it results from nonlinear streaming driven by the oscillatory boundary layers near the contact line.

• Received 14 February 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.2.084801