Numerical study of interaction of two vortex rings

Abstract

Three-dimensional interaction of vortices with finite core is investigated numerically using the Rosenhead-Moore approximation. As the computational scheme in this approximation cannot deal with the structure of the vortex core, a bundle of vortex elements is employed to represent a single physical vortex tube. After the validity of this method was confirmed by comparing the numerical result for a single vortex ring composed of various number of the elements with the analytical solution, two cases of interaction of two vortex rings were studied. The first case is two vortex rings traveling along a common axis, and the second is two vortex rings moving side by side along parallel axes. Comparison with the experiments showed good agreement.