Vortex shedding from a ring in shear flow

Vortex shedding from a bluff ring in a linear shear flow has been investigated experimentally. The shedding frequency, measured using a hot wire in various positions within the near wake of the ring, was found to be remarkably insensitive to a mean flow shear parameter, , defined by (d/U _o).U/y, where d is the mean ring diameter and U _o is the undisturbed upstream velocity on the ring axis; even for = 0.41, corresponding to a velocity variation of about ±24% across the outer ring diameter, the Strouhal number was only about 5% lower than in uniform flow. However, the strong axisymmetric shedding which dominates the flow for = 0 is significantly affected by shear. Indeed, spatial correlation measurements demonstrated that the shedding actually becomes anti-symmetric at the highest values of . The implication of these results is that vortex flowmeters constructed using a ring as the shedding body would be relatively unaffected by changes in the upstream mean flow profile.