Vortex Dynamics

Vortex dynamics is a natural paradigm for the field of chaotic motion and modern dynamical system theory.

P. G. Saffman (Author)

9780521477390, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 24 February 1995

328 pages, 54 b/w illus.
23.4 x 15.5 x 2.2 cm, 0.452 kg

' … a major contribution to the literature of physical and mathematical vortex dynamics.' Science

The discovery of coherent structures in turbulence has fostered the hope that the study of vortices will lead to models and an understanding of turbulent flow, thereby solving or at least making less mysterious one of the great unsolved problems of classical physics. Vortex dynamics is a natural paradigm for the field of chaotic motion and modern dynamical system theory. The emphasis in this monograph is on the classical theory of inviscid incompressible fluids containing finite regions of vorticity. The effects of viscosity, compressibility, inhomogeneity and stratification are enormously important in many fields of application, from hypersonic flight to global environmental fluid mechanics. However, this volume focuses on those aspects of fluid motion which are primarily controlled by the vorticity and are such that the effects of the other fluid properties are secondary.

1. Fundamental properties of vorticity
2. Singular distributions of vorticity
3. Vortex momentum
4. Motion with surfaces
5. Some applications
6. Creation of vorticity
7. Dynamics of line vortices in two-dimensional flow
8. Vortex sheets in two dimensions
9. Dynamics of two-dimensional vortex patches
10. Axisymmetric vortex rings
11. Dynamics of vortex filaments
12. Three-dimensional vortex instability
13. Effects of viscosity
14. Miscellaneous topics.

Subject Areas: Applied mathematics [PBW]