Initial Motion of a Viscous Vortex Ring
Resource
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A,446,589-599.
Journal
Proceedings of The Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences
Pages
589-599
Date Issued
2007-01
Date
2007-01
Author(s)
Abstract
Abstract The behaviour of a viscous vortex ring is examined by a matched asymptotic analysis up to three orders. This study aims at investigating how much the location of maximum vorticity deviates from the centroid of the vortex ring, defined by P. G. Saffman (1970). All the results are presented in dimensionless form, as indicated in the following context. Let Γ be the initial circulation of the vortex ring, and R denote the ring radius normalized by its initial radius Ri. For the asymptotic analysis, a small parameter ∊ = ( t/Re)½ is introduced, where t denotes time normalized by R2i/Γ, and Re = Γ/v is the Reynolds number defined with Γ and the kinematic viscosity v. Our analysis shows that the trajectory of maximum vorticity moves with the velocity (normalized by Γ/Ri) Um = – 1/4πR {ln 4R/∊ + Hm} + O(∊ ln ∊), where Hm = Hm(Re, t) depends on the Reynolds number Re and may change slightly with time t for the initial motion. For the centroid of the vortex ring, we obtain the velocity Uc by merely replacing Hm by Hc, which is a constant –0.558 for all values of the Reynolds number. Only in the limit of Re → ∞, the values of Hm and Hc are found to coincide with each other, while the deviation of Hm from the constant Hc is getting significant with decreasing the Reynolds number. Also of interest is that the radial motion is shown to exist for the trajectory of maximum vorticity at finite Reynolds numbers. Furthermore, the present analysis clarifies the earlier discrepancy between Saffman’s result and that obtained by C. Tung and L. Ting (1967).