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Blocking an inviscid shear flow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2006

Melvin E. Stern
Melvin E. Stern
Affiliation:
Department of Oceanography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA
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Abstract

The upstream influence in an inviscid two-dimensional shear flow around a semicircular ‘cape’ (radius A) is computed using a piecewise uniform vorticity model of a boundary-layer current. The area of this layer upstream from the cape increases as the square root of time t when A is small, and increases as t for larger A. Complete blocking occurs when A is approximately three times the boundary-layer thickness, in which case all oncoming particles accumulate in a large upstream vortex. The numerical results obtained from the contour dynamical method also show the generation of large eddies downstream from the obstacle.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 227 , June 1991 , pp. 449 - 472
Copyright
© 1991 Cambridge University Press

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