Trailing vortices in homogeneous and density-stratified media

Abstract

Experiments were conducted with three delta wings and two rectangular wings to investigate the evolution of trailing vortices in stratified and unstratified water. The vortex trajectories were determined as a function of the normalized time V0t/b0, stratification parameter Nb0/V0 and an effective vortex-core size re/b0. The results have shown that the vortices rise only to a finite height as they decay gradually at first and rapidly thereafter under the influence of turbulence, sinusoidal instability, and core bursting. The effect of stratification is to reduce the lifespan of vortices and the maximum height attained by them.