Affiliations: Institute for Problems in Mechanics, RAS, prospect
Vernadskogo, 101/1, 119526 Moscow, Russia. E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: The flow pattern around a thin strip horizontally towed at constant
velocity in a continuously stratified liquid is visualized by conventional
"Vertical slit-Foucault's knife", "Maksoutov's
slit-thread" and "horizontal slit-regular grating" methods. Using these
sensitive high-resolution methods enables to reveal new kind of the streaky
structure including a sequence of thin sloping interfaces both on the strip
surface and inside its wake. When velocity or distance from the strip
increases, the streaks may be turned into the sloping or nearly horizontal
interfaces. Reconnections of outer edges of the streaks result in appearance of
a set of symmetrical "butterfly-like" vortices, which are perturbed by a
shear flow inside the downstream wake. Lift forces caused by a slope of the
strip produce an asymmetry of the wake and lead to fast degeneration of the
streaky structures.