A Note on Trapping Moving Vortices

The topic of stationary configurations of point vortices, also known as vortex equilibrium, has received considerable attention in recent years. By observing numerical results, it is found that a "counterpart" of this system also exists, in which moving vortices may be "trapped" by an inlet-like device to form a stationary pattern with no translational motion. After an intuitive explanation for the process, vortex trajectory maps based on numerical results are presented. These maps exhibit two stationary points under the present conditions, which are the focal points of vortex trajectories. A vortex upstream of these points, if within a certain offset range, will move towards these points spontaneously and be captured there. This proposed device is also capable of trapping spinning vortex pairs and triads. It is possible to impose a uniform stream at infinity, as long as the flow field is still dominated by the moving vortices.