Interaction of decaying trailing vortices in spanwise shear flow (Q1088561)

The drift of trailing vortices in a cross wind near the ground is modeled by an unsteady two-dimensional, rotational flowfield where there are concentrations of large vorticity in spots having small effective sizes and finite total strengths. The problem is analyzed by combining the matched asymptotic solution of the decaying vortical spots and the Euler solution of the background unsteady rotational flow. Using the method of averaging, we develop a numerical scheme in which the grid size and time step depend only on the length and velocity scales of the background flow and not on the effective core size of vortical spots. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the interaction between the trajectories of the vortical spots and the convection of vorticity in the background flowfield.