A Lagrangian vortex method for unbounded flows

A technique is presented for velocity calculations on the highly distorted node distributions typical of those found in Lagrangian vortex methods. The method solves the partial differential equation for streamfunction directly on the nodes, via a sparse, symmetric system of equations that can be solved using standard iterative solvers. When implemented in a triangulated vortex method, the technique gives computation times which scale as N1.23, where N is the number of nodes. The computation scheme is derived for two-dimensional problems and applied to the prediction of the evolution of perturbed multipolar vortices. Due to the numerical performance of the method, it has been possible to examine such evolution at higher and lower Reynolds numbers than have been considered in published numerical studies.