Hollow wakes past arbitrarily shaped obstacles

Abstract

An analytical solution is presented for steady inviscid separated flows modelled by hollow vortices, that is, by closed vortex sheets bounding a region with fluid at rest. Steady flows past arbitrary obstacles protruding from an infinite wall are considered. The solution is similar to that of the vortex patch model; it depends on two free parameters that define the size of the hollow vortex and the location of the separation point. When a sharp edge constrains the separation point (Kutta condition), the solution depends on a single parameter. As with the vortex patch model, families of growing vortices exist, which represent the continuation of desingularized point vortices. Numerical results are presented for the flows past a semicircular bump, a Ringleb snow cornice and a normal flat plate. The differences from the previous results found in the literature are analysed and discussed with the present solutions for the flow past a normal flat plate.