Interaction of an oscillating vortex with a turbulent boundary layer

An oscillating vortex embedded within a turbulent boundary layer was generated experimentally by forcing a periodic lateral translation of a half-delta wing vortex generator. The objective of the experiment was to investigate the possibility that a natural oscillation, or meander, might be responsible for flattened vortex cores observed in previous work, which could also have contaminated previous turbulence measurements. The effect of this forced oscillation was characterized by comparison of measurements of the mean velocities and Reynolds stresses at two streamwise stations, for cases with and without forcing. The Reynolds stresses, especially ′w′, were affected significantly by the forced oscillation, mainly through contributions from the individual production terms, provided the vortex was not too diffuse.