Asymptotic behavior of the far region of turbulent wake vortices

An approximate mathematical model, formulation of the problem, and its approximate solution are proposed for the far region of a turbulent vortex wake past a moving body, where the departure of the horizontal velocity component from the uniform flow is slight. It is assumed that the single important parameter that defines the main flow characteristics in this region is the vortex momentum per unit length produced in the fluid by the lift equal to the weigth of the moving body uncompensated by the buoyancy force. Thus, the flow is self-similar, and the self-similarity law determines the intensity, shape, and location of vortex lines as functions of the downstream distance with accuracy up to a constant factor, which cannot be determined theoretically and should be obtained by comparison of theory with experiment. A boundary-value problem is formulated to determine the flow structure of vortex lines (vorticity distribution). A solution of the problem is obtained numerically in the limit of “vanishing turbulent viscosity”. The variation in the maximum velocity of a vortex line with distance, determined by self-similarity, is in agreement with available experimental data.