Latitudinally deforming rotating sphere

•The fluid flow develops two-dimensionally for a purely stretching surface.•The strongly rotating sphere behaves similar to a non-deforming and rotating sphere.•Drag is reduced by the surface stretching mechanism.•More torque is required when both stretching and rotation are active. In this study, we consider a sphere with a surface that is fully covered by a stretchable elastic material. The radius of the sphere is fixed and it is also rotating about its radial axis. We investigate how the axisymmetric motion of a triggered fluid flow around the sphere is affected by the presence of both sphere rotation and latitudinal stretching. Considering that the deformation over the sphere commences at the pole, the problem is formulated such that the fluid flow near the pole is similar to the induced flow due to a linearly stretchable rotating disk, which has been described well in previous studies. When the rotation is omitted, the flow develops two-dimensionally under the action of pure stretching; otherwise, a three-dimensional axisymmetric fluid flow occurs, which is computed at each latitudinal angle both numerically and using a perturbation approach. The solution with wall deformation is different from the traditional character of the solution due to a solely rotating sphere. This solution is then used to compute the surface shears due to the physical drag and torque acting over the sphere. The contribution of wall stretching reduces the drag, whereas high rotation suppresses the effects of stretching to enhance the drag. More torque is required to rotate the sphere when both stretching and rotation mechanisms are in action.