HI, Can someone give me an idea of what are vortex methods and how are they used? Are they a computational tool or an analytical/theoretical tool for studying flows. Thanks N

"Vortex methods" comprise a wide body of computational techniques, ranging from discrete vortex methods where a shear layer is represented by a set of discrete vortices to the vortex lattice methods popularized 10-15 years ago for solving potential flows over wings to the vorticity-streamfunction approach to solving the 2D Navier-Stokes equations. Of course, this is a personal opinion from someone who dealt with discrete vortex methods for a number of years. Generally, discrete vortex methods were originally developed for solving potential flows (ref. Turgut Sarpkaya, for example), but the work of Alexander (?) Chorin and others extended discrete vortex methods to model viscous flows. If you are really interested do a search on some of these names.

http://math.berkeley.edu/~chorin/

vortex methods also encompass the "velocity-vorticity" formulation which was originally emerged to bypass the problem of getting an appropriate boundary condition for pressure in the primitive approach. The governing equations are the three vorticity transport equations their definition and the continuity equation and finally the divergence free field of the vorticity. Clerly this is an overspecified system which is difficult to solve. Till today no collocated robust algorithm exists although some staggered approaches have been tried with visible sucess. This method asks for continuing research.

Dear Cfd Online I am ms. student of energy conversion in iust , I am intrested in vortex dynamics and working on 3D random vortex method , I wonder if you send me some related papers. Your's hojjat madadi Hydrodynamics lab. - Mech. Dep.- Iust uni. - Tehran - Iran