BOUNDARY LAYERS IN LAMINAR VORTEX FLOWS
Abstract
A detailed experimental study of the flow in an intense, laminar, axisymmetric vortex has been conducted in the Purdue Tornado Vortex Simulator. The complicated nature of the flow in the boundary layer of laboratory vortices and presumably on that encountered in full-scale tornadoes has been examined. After completing a number of modifications to the existing facility to improve the quality of the flow in the simulator, hot-film anemometry was employed for making velocity-component and turbulence-intensity measurements of both the free-stream and boundary layer portions of the flow. The measurements represent the first experimental boundary layer investigation of a well-defined vortex flow to appear in the literature. These results were compared with recent theoretical work by Burggraf, Stewartson and Belcher (1971) and with an exact similarity solution for line-sink boundary layers developed by the author. A comparison is also made with the numerical simulation of Wilson (1981) in which the boundary conditions were matched to those of the present experimental investigation. Expressions for the vortex core radius, the maximum tangential velocity and the maximum pressure drop are given in terms of dimensionless modeling parameters. References Burggraf, O. R., K. Stewartson and R. Belcher, Boundary layer induced by a potential vortex. Phys. Fluids 14, 1821-1833 (1971). Wilson, T., M. S. thesis, Vortex Boundary Layer Dynamics, Univ. Calif. Davis (1981).
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Fluid dynamics|Gases
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