Acoustic waves emitted by a vortex ring passing near a wedge-like plate

Acoustic waves emitted by a vortex ring moving near a thin wedge-like plate of finite width have been studied. The experiments are performed for three configurations: the plate (A) is held edgeways to the direction of the vortex motion, (B) is held sideways to the direction, and (C) is held edgeways at an angle of 45° against the vortex motion. The observed sound wave is of dipole radiation type, and the magnitude of the pressure is large in the direction of the normal to the plate plane and small in parallel. The observed pressure is proportional to the third power of the vortex speed. The instantaneous force exerted on the plate by the vortex motion has also been examined. The force vector is mainly normal to the plate plane. The observed profiles agree within a reasonable degree of accuracy with the theoretical ones calculated for the vortex ring interacting with the flat plate of thickness zero.     

Sound emission by a vortex ring passing through a circular hole in a large flat plate

Acoustic emission has been studied experimentally when a vortex ring passes through a circular hole in a large flat plate, along its normal axis. The speed of the vortex ring is made high enough for the sound emission to be detectable, but can be regarded as sufficiently low in comparison to the sound speed. Substantial monopole and quadrupole components are observed in the detected wave profiles. Translational motion of the vortex ring in the presence of the flat plate with a hole has been observed optically, and its relation with the sound emission is determined. In this case, the power law of the acoustic pressure amplitude of monopolar vortex sound versus the translation speed U of the vortex ring is first measured in detail and is found to be U^2.1–U^2.4. This means that experimentally determined powers for the monopole components in the two half-spaces also agree approximately with the corresponding values predicted by the theory of vortex sound.     

Off-axial acoustic scattering of a high-order Bessel vortex beam by a rigid sphere

In this paper, the off-axial acoustic scattering of a high-order Bessel vortex beam by a rigid immovable (fixed) sphere is investigated. It is shown here that shifting the sphere off the axis of wave propagation induces a dependence of the scattering on the azimuthal angle. Theoretical expressions for the incident and scattered field from a rigid immovable sphere are derived. The near- and far-field acoustic scattering fields are expressed using partial wave series involving the spherical harmonics, the scattering coefficients of the sphere, the half-conical angle of the wave number components of the beam, its order and the beam-shape coefficients. The scattering coefficients of the sphere and the 3D scattering directivity plots in the near- and far-field regions are evaluated using a numerical integration procedure. The calculations indicate that the scattering directivity patterns near the sphere and in the far-field are strongly dependent upon the position of the sphere facing the incident high-order Bessel vortex beam.     

Three-dimensional instability on the interaction between a vortex and a stationary sphere

We present direct numerical simulations of the interaction between a vortex ring and a stationary sphere for Re = 2,000. We analyze the vortex dynamics of the ring as it approaches the sphere surface, and the boundary layer formed on the surface of the sphere undergoes separation to form a secondary vortex ring. This secondary vortex ring can develop azimuthal instabilities, which grow rapidly as it interacts with the primary ring. The azimuthal instabilities on both rings are characterized by analysis of the azimuthal component decomposition of the axial vorticity.     

Instability of the flow around an impacting sphere

Results from an experimental and numerical study of the flow generated by a sphere immersed in fluid, impacting normally without rebound on a solid wall, are presented. The parameters are the running distance before impact and the sphere Reynolds number. For running lengths less than 7.5 diameters, the sphere wake before impact is axisymmetric in the form of an attached vortex ring. After impact, this ring overtakes the sphere and spreads out along the wall. For Reynolds numbers below 1000, the flow remains axisymmetric at all times. For higher values, perturbations of azimuthal wavenumbers 20–25 are observed on the vortex ring, leading to a breakdown of the flow. We analyse different hypotheses concerning the origin of this instability, with the conclusion that a centrifugal instability mechanism is likely to be acting in this flow. Comparisons are made with the flow involving an isolated vortex ring approaching a wall. Numerical simulations of this case have revealed that two distinct instability mechanisms are operating, one of which appears to be similar to the centrifugal instability observed for the sphere impact.     

Interaction of a shock wave with a high-speed vortex ring

This is a detailed experimental study of the behavior of diffraction and refraction of a shock front resulting from the interaction of a shock wave and a vortex ring. A spherical shock wave impinges on a vortex ring which is traveling at a high speed in the opposite direction. The configuration of the wave front is visualized by a shadowgraph technique using a pulse dye laser. The shock front is influenced by the non-uniform flow induced by the vortex and diffracted around the vortex core. The shock front passing through the inside of the ring is decelerated by the counter-flow, and the density behind it increases. The diffracted front over the vortex ring expands spirally around the core and intersects the front passing through the inside of the ring. The intersecting circular curve converges toward the central axis of the ring. The diffracted shock in the inner part of the core forms branching waves. The branching points also focus on the central axis of the ring.     

Experimental investigation of a twice-shocked spherical gas inhomogeneity with particle image velocimetry

Results are presented from an experimental investigation into the interaction of a planar shock wave with a vortex ring. A free-falling spherical soap bubble is traversed by the incident shock wave and develops into a vortex ring as a result of baroclinically deposited vorticity (?r×?p 1 0{\nabla\rho\times\nabla p \neq 0}). The vortex ring translates with a velocity relative to the particle velocity behind the shock wave due to circulation. After the shock wave reflects from the tube end wall, it traverses the vortex ring (this process is called “reshock”) and deposits additional vorticity. Planar Mie scattering is used to visualize the atomized soap film at high frame rates (up to 10,000 fps). Particle image velocimetry (PIV) was performed for an argon bubble in nitrogen accelerated by a M = 1.35 shock wave. Circulation was determined from the PIV velocity field and found to agree well with Kelvin’s vortex ring model.     

Formation and evolution of vortex rings induced by interactions between shock waves and a low-density bubble

The deformation and instability of a low-density spherical bubble induced by an incident and its reflected shock waves are studied by using the large eddy simulation method. The computational model is firstly validated by experimental results from the literature and is further used to examine the effect of incident shock wave strength on the formations and three-dimensional evolutions of the vortex rings. For the weak shock wave case (Ma?=?1.24), the baroclinic effect induced by the reflected shock wave is the key mechanism for the formation of new vortex rings. The vortex rings not only move due to the self-induced effect and the flow field velocity, but also generate azimuthal instability due to the pressure disturbance. For the strong shock wave case (Ma?=?2.2), a boundary layer is formed adjacent to the end wall owing to the approach of vortex ring, and unsteady separation of the boundary layer near the wall results in the ejection and formation of new vortex rings. These vortex rings interact in the vicinity of the end wall and finally collapse to a complicated vortex structure via azimuthal instability. For both shock wave strength cases, the evolutions of vortex rings due to the instability lead to the formation of the complicated structure dominated by the small-scale streamwise vortices.     

Propagation of acoustic waves and shock waves radiated by a sinusoidal pulsation of a sphere during a single period

A spherical sound wave is emitted by a sphere which executes a small sinusoidal pulsation of a single period at high frequency in an inviscid fluid. Nonlinear propagation of the waves is formulated as an initial boundary value problem and is analysed in detail. The governing equation is linear near the sphere, while it is a nonlinear hyperbolic equation in a far field. The nonlinearity has a significant effect there, leading to the formation of two shocks. The exact solution to match the near field solution can easily be obtained for the far field equation. The nonlinear distortion of waveform and the shock formation distance are evaluated from the representation of the solution with strained coordinates. The evolution and nonlinear attenuation of the two shock discontinuities are also examined by making use of the equal-areas rule. In its asymptotic form the entire profile is an N wave with a long tail.     

Structure and evolution of the airflow generated by a slender body entry near a tube

When a slender body moving forward in open air enters into a confined region, two important unsteady aerodynamic phenomena are generated. An exiting flow is created with a direction opposite to the body movement and inside the confined region, a compression wave is formed. Generation mechanism of compression wave have been extensively studied but so far, no detailed investigation of the exiting flow has ever been reported. The experimental study presented in this paper was undertaken to gain insight into the structure and the evolution of the exit-flow. Experiments were conducted with an axisymmetric apparatus and the explored range of the moving body speed was 5–50 m/s. The study focused on the influence of the body speed and the body nose geometry on the flow. It was shown that the air ejected from the tube entrance generates an annulus jet accompanied by a vortex ring. The vortex development was clarified using laser sheet visualizations associated with unsteady pressure and velocity measurements at the tube entrance. It is constituted by four phases, the pre-vortex phase, the vortex development phase, the vortex convection phase and the vortex breakdown phase. The duration of each of these steps was found to be independent of both the studied parameters in a non-dimensional time scale. Furthermore, neither the body speed nor the nose geometry induced significant changes on the vortex ring evolution, except for extreme conditions (low body speed, V_M.B.<15 m/s, and/or very long nose geometry, L_nose/D_M.B.>6). The evolution of the vortex ring was compared to that of ‘classical’ vortex ring generated at a tube exit by a piston motion with large non-dimensional stroke length. Main similarities and differences were discussed in the paper. In particular, the formation number of vortex ring observed in our experiments was found to be significantly smaller.     

Obstacle-induced spiral vortex breakdown

An experimental investigation on vortex breakdown dynamics is performed. An adverse pressure gradient is created along the axis of a wing-tip vortex by introducing a sphere downstream of an elliptical hydrofoil. The instrumentation involves high-speed visualizations with air bubbles used as tracers and 2D Laser Doppler Velocimeter (LDV). Two key parameters are identified and varied to control the onset of vortex breakdown: the swirl number, defined as the maximum azimuthal velocity divided by the free-stream velocity, and the adverse pressure gradient. They were controlled through the incidence angle of the elliptical hydrofoil, the free-stream velocity and the sphere diameter. A single helical breakdown of the vortex was systematically observed over a wide range of experimental parameters. The helical breakdown coiled around the sphere in the direction opposite to the vortex but rotated along the vortex direction. We have observed that the location of vortex breakdown moved upstream as the swirl number or the sphere diameter was increased. LDV measurements were corrected using a reconstruction procedure taking into account the so-called vortex wandering and the size of the LDV measurement volume. This allows us to investigate the spatio-temporal linear stability properties of the flow and demonstrate that the flow transition from columnar to single helical shape is due to a transition from convective to absolute instability.     

Wave drag of an ellipsoid of revolution rapidly moving in a horizontal direction in a uniformly stratified fluid

The problem of the wave drag of ellipsoids moving in a uniformly stratified ideal fluid is considered by means of modeling the bodies by surface distributions of mass sources. Analytical results are obtained using the distributions known from the theory of a uniform fluid, which make it possible to describe the emission of internal waves by rapidly moving ellipsoids of revolution (spheroids) in the limit of large Froude numbers. An asymptotically simplified form of the dependence of the wave drag on the Froude number and the spheroid axis ratio is found. In the particular case of a sphere, the result confirmed earlier by Greenslade by making comparisons with a numerical calculation and experimental data is obtained.     

Large eddy simulation of a vortex ring impinging on a three-dimensional circular cylinder

A vortex ring impacting a three-dimensional circular cylinder is studied using large eddy simulation (LES) for a Reynolds number Re = 4 × 10⁴ based on the initial translation speed and diameter of the vortex ring. We have investigated the evolution of vortical structures and identified three typical evolution phases. When the primary vortex closely approaches to the cylinder, a secondary vortex is generated and its segment parts move inward to the primary vortex ring. then two large-scale loop-like vortices are formed to evolve in opposite directions. Thirdly, the two loop-like vortices collide with each other to form complicated small-scale vortical structures. Moreover, a series of hair-pin vortices are generated due to the stretching and deformation of the tertiary vortex. The trajectories of vortical structures and the relevant evolution speeds are analyzed. The total kinetic energy and enstrophy are investigated to reveal their properties relevant to the three evolution phases.     

Shock–vortex interactions in a soap film

This work experimentally visualizes the interaction of a quasi-one-dimensional moving shock wave with a two-dimensional vortex in a soap film for the first time. A vertical soap film shock tube was used to generate a quasi-one-dimensional moving shock wave and a NACA-0012 airfoil intruded into the soap film was towed to shed the starting vortex. The interesting interaction phenomena were then visualized using a traditional high-speed flash photography. The concentration of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) used was 0.5 CMC (critical micelle concentration) to keep the surfactant molecules behave as two-dimensional gases. A sequence of pictures shows that the shock is distorted non-symmetrically as it passes through the spiral vortex flow field and the vortex structure is compressed in the direction normal to the shock. These flow features observed in soap films are qualitatively similar to their counterparts in gases. In addition, the visualization of the interactions of a quasi-one-dimensional moving shock wave with a Kármán vortex street are presented.      

Interaction of a Streamwise Vortex with an Oblique Shock Wave

Interaction of a supersonic streamwise vortex with an oblique shock wave is considered. A mathematical model of the streamwise vortex is constructed. Three interaction regimes (weak, moderate, and strong) are found. It is shown numerically that vortex breakdown is possible in the case of strong interaction. The influence of the governing parameters on the interaction type is studied. It is shown that the main effect on the interaction type is exerted by the streamwise velocity and angle of the wedge forming the shock wave. The effect of splitting of the primary vortex on the shock wave in the case of moderate and strong interaction regimes is found.     

From generation to chaotic motion of a ring configuration of vortex structures on a sphere

This is a review article of recent research developments on the motion of a polygonal ring configuration of vortex structures with singular vorticity distributions in incompressible and inviscid flows on a non-rotating sphere. Numerical computation of a single vortex sheet reveals that the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability gives rise to the formation of a polygonal ring arrangement of rolling-up spirals. An application of methods of Hamiltonian dynamics to the N-vortex problem on the sphere shows that the motion of the ring configuration of homogeneous point vortices, which is a simple model for the rolling-up spirals, becomes chaotic after a long time evolution. Some remarks on an extension of the present research and a generic non-self-similar collapse are also provided.     

On a pair of axisymmetric forces inside a sphere

In this paper, the stresses in a sphere under a pair of concentrated forces acting axisymmetrically inside the sphere are solved by using a Love's stress function. The method of solution is also applied to solve the problem of a pair of ring forces acting axisymmetrically inside the sphere. In either problem, the solution covers the limiting case in which the pair of forces or ring forces is acting on the sphere.     

Associated disturbances around a vortex ring in a stratified fluid

A motion of a vortex ring in a stratified fluid is accompanied by associated disturbances which, in the schlieren visualization in the field of a horizontal density gradient, have the shape of a symmetric four-petal configuration. The criterion of the existence of the disturbances is the Froude number Fr based on the motion velocity and the vertical vortex size. On the range Fr > 1, the disturbances are stable with respect to the variation of themotion regime and the distortion of the vortex shape. For Fr < 1 the disturbances disappear. Computer processing of the schlieren photographs showed that the experimental spatial dependences of the disturbance amplitude are close to the functions describing the distribution of the vertical velocity component in the inviscid flow past a sphere.     

Self-intensification in shock wave and vortex interaction

Computer simulation has been performed for the interaction between a shock wave and a vortex ring moving toward the wave. The computed density contours are compared with the pattern of shadowgraphs. A remarkable property found in the simulation is that, during the passage of the shock wave over the vortex ring, the part of the wave propagating through the inside of the ring-vortex is intensified spontaneously at a localized region. Maximum pressure occurs inside the vortex and attains a high value, about several times that of the impinging shock for incident Mach numbers of around 1.2 with the vortex translation Mach number 0.60. This is due to a double-step mechanism of intensification within the flow field by the shock-vortex interaction.     

Three-dimensional numerical simulation of a vortex ring impacting a bump

A vortex ring impinging on a three-dimensional bump is studied using large eddy simulation for a Reynolds number Re = 4 × 10⁴ based on the initial translation speed and diameter of the vortex ring. The effects of bump height on the vortical flow phenomena and the underlying physical mechanisms are investigated. Based on the analysis of the evolution of vortical structures, two typical kinds of vortical structures, i.e., the wrapping vortices and the hair-pin vortices, are identified and play an important role in the flow state evolution. The circulation of the primary vortex ring reasonably elucidates some typical phases of flow evolution. Furthermore, the mechanism of flow transition from laminar to turbulent state has been revealed based on analysis of turbulent kinetic energy.