  A series of direct numerical simulations of Taylor-Couette (TC) flow, the
flow between two coaxial cylinders, with the outer cylinder rotating and the
inner one fixed, were performed. Three cases, with outer cylinder Reynolds
numbers $Re_o$ of $Re_o=5.5\cdot10^4$, $Re_o=1.1\cdot10^5$ and
$Re_o=2.2\cdot10^5$ were considered. The radius ratio $\eta=r_i/r_o$ was fixed
to $\eta=0.909$ to mitigate the effects of curvature. The vertical aspect ratio
$\Gamma$ was fixed to $\Gamma=2.09$. Being linearly stable, outer cylinder
rotation TC flow is known to have very different behavior than pure inner
cylinder rotation TC flow. Here, we find that the flow nonetheless becomes
turbulent, but the torque required to drive the cylinders and level of velocity
fluctuations was found to be smaller than those for pure inner cylinder
rotation at comparable Reynolds numbers. The mean angular momentum profiles
showed a large gradient in the bulk, instead of the constant angular momentum
profiles of pure inner cylinder rotation. The near-wall mean and fluctuation
velocity profiles were found to coincide only very close to the wall, showing
large deviations from both pure inner cylinder rotation profiles and the
classic von Karman law of the wall elsewhere. Finally, transport of angular
velocity was found to occur mainly through intermittent bursts, and not through
wall-attached large-scale structures as is the case for pure inner cylinder
rotation.
