The motion of a circular foil in the field of a fixed point singularity: Integrability and asymptotic behavior

Abstract

A finite-dimensional model is developed, which describes the motion of a balanced circular foil with proper circulation in the field of a fixed vortex source. The motion of the foil has been studied in two special cases: that of a fixed vortex and that of a fixed source. It is shown that in the absence of proper circulation, the fixed vortex and the fixed source have the same impact on the motion of the foil. However, adding nonzero proper circulation leads to qualitative differences in the foil's dynamics. For a fixed vortex, there exist three types of motions: the fall on a vortex in finite time, periodic and quasiperiodic motion around the vortex. The investigation of this case reduces to analysis of a Hamiltonian system with one degree of freedom. Typical phase portraits and graphs of the effective potential of the system are plotted vs the distance between the geometric center of the foil and the vortex. For a fixed source, two types of motions are possible: the fall on the source in finite time and unbounded escape from the source. For small intensities of the source, the asymptotics of escape to infinity is constructed.