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The interaction of a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 0012 wing-tip vortex with a grid-generated turbulent flow was experimentally investigated. The experiments were conducted in the near- and mid-wake regions at three free-stream turbulence (FST) levels, viz., 0.5%, 3%, and 6%, at a Reynolds number, based on the wing chord length, cw, of 2×105. Stereoscopic particle image velocimetry measurements were carried out at four downstream positions: x/cw = 1.25, 3.25, 6.25, and 7.75. Streamwise vorticity contours showed that the wing-tip vortex decayed with increased FST and downstream distance. Turbulent surroundings were found to affect the meandering amplitude of the vortex, which increased with the dispersed scatter pattern of the vortex center motion, resulting in a meandering-induced turbulence. Meandering-corrected turbulent kinetic energy revealed the existence of a laminar core at the center of the vortex surrounded by low turbulence levels outside the core. This was attributed to the stabilizing Coriolis effects of the strong rotational motion inside the vortex core, which tend to re-laminarize the turbulent fluid crossing the periphery of the vortex. Snapshot proper orthogonal decomposition analysis on the coherent component of the velocity field revealed two dominant modes forming a helical dipole, consistent with the helical displacement of a Kelvin wave with an azimuthal wavenumber |m=1|. An analysis of the terms balancing the rate of decay of the mean enstrophy revealed that increasing FST increases the stretching of the mean enstrophy within the vortex core while it reduces both its transport and convection terms. Nonetheless, the latter contributions were larger in all cases studied acting as the main mechanism for mean enstrophy decay.

The interaction of a wing-tip vortex of a rectangular, square-tipped wing having a NACA 0012 airfoil section with a grid-generated turbulent flow was investigated in this paper. The experiments were conducted in the near and mid-wake regions at three free stream turbulence (FST) intensities of 0.5%, 3% and 6%, and at two Reynolds numbers, Re, based on the wing chord length, c w , of 2 × 10 5 and 3 × 10 5 . Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (SPIV) and hot-wire measurements were carried out at four downstream positions, namely x / c w = 1.25 , 3.25 , 6.25 and 7.75. Streamwise velocity contours showed that the wing-tip vortex decayed with increased FST and downstream distance. In the vortex core region, the streamwise velocity decelerated while the vortex adopted a wake-like profile. FST was found to decrease the vortex circulation and to increase the vortex radius and vortex meandering amplitude. When increasing Reynolds number, the grid cases showed little variation of the vortex radius and peak vorticity levels, particularly at larger downstream positions, suggesting that the effects of FST and R e number on the vortex development are nearly independent. The measured total turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) was found to be mostly due to vortex meandering. In that, total TKE levels devoid of meandering showed a virtually turbulence-free vortex core.

The interaction of a NACA 0012 wingtip vortex with a grid-generated flow was investigated in this paper. The experiments were conducted in the near and mid-wakes regions at three free stream turbulence (FST) levels of 0.5% (empty wind tunnel), 3% and 6%, and at two Reynolds numbers, based on the wing chord length, of 2 × 105 and 3 × 105. Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (SPIV) and hot wire measurements were carried out at four downstream positions, namely x/c = 0.5, 2.5, 5 and 7. Streamwise velocity contours showed that the wingtip vortex decayed with increased FST and downstream distance. In the vortex core region, the streamwise velocity decelerated while the vortex adopted a wake-like profile. FST was found to decrease the vortex circulation, to increase the vortex radius, and to increase the vortex meandering amplitude. By increasing the Reynolds number, the grid cases showed a small variation of the vortex radius and vorticity peak, particularly at downstream positions of 5 and 7. With meandering correction, the turbulence level within the vortex core were found to be reduced as the artificial turbulence induced by the vortex meandering was removed.