Abstract
It is well documented that a trailing vortex pair approaching the ground, and a vortex ring colliding head-on with a rigid plane, experience a reversal in axial velocity which is commonly referred to as “rebound”. One explanation of this phenomenon suggests that it is essentially an inviscid process due to the effect of the finite core-size, whereas another and more widely accepted explanation attributes it to the influence of a secondary vortex which is generated at the surface by viscous effects. The aim of this paper is to assess experimentally the validity of these competing explanations. To achieve this, flow visualization studies of the collision of a vortex ring with a wall are compared with those of the head-on collision of two identical rings. The head-on collision is designed to mimic the inviscid, free-slip case of a ring/wall interaction. This paper describes the experimental findings.
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Lim, T.T., Nickels, T.B. & Chong, M.S. A note on the cause of rebound in the head-on collision of a vortex ring with a wall. Experiments in Fluids 12, 41–48 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00226564
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00226564