Résumé
We investigate the flow between a shallow rotating cone and a stationary plate. This cone and plate device is used in rheometry, haemostasis as well as in food industry to study the properties of the flow w.r.t. shear stress. Physical experiments and formal computations show that close to the apex the flow is approximately azimuthal and the shear-stress is constant within the device, the quality of the approximation being controlled essentially by the single parameter Re epsilon(2), where Re is the Reynolds number and epsilon the thinness of the cone-plate gap. We establish this fact by means of rigorous energy estimates and numerical simulations. Surprisingly enough, this approximation is valid though the primary flow is not itself a solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, and it does not even fulfill the correct boundary conditions, which are in this particular case discontinuous along a line, thus not allowing for a usual Leray solution. To overcome this difficulty we construct a suitable corrector.