Experiments on the flow past an inclined disk

Abstract

The wake of a disk at an angle to a stream contains marked periodic motions which arise from the regular shedding of vortices from the trailing edge. The vortices are in the form of a chain of irregular rings, each one linked to the succeeding one, and they move downstream at about 0·6 of free-stream velocity. The prominence of the vortex shedding increases as the angle of incidence (measured from the normal) increases up to at least 50°. The shedding frequency increases with the angle of incidence, but by a suitable choice of reference velocity and length scale, may be described by a wake Strouhal number which has the constant value 0·21 for all angles of incidence above zero, up to at least 40°.Axially-symmetric bodies at zero incidence shed vortices in a similar manner, except that the orientation of the plane of vortex shedding is not fixed and varies from time to time.