Alexandria University 2nd Year - Semester (1)

Faculty of Engineering Academic Year 2010/2011

Dept. of Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering

Fluid Mechanics (MR 231)

Lecture Notes (18)

Irrotational Flows Formed by Superposition

Now that we have a set of building block irrotational flows, we are ready to construct
some more interesting irrotational flow fields by the superposition technique. We limit
our examples to planar flows in the xy-plane.

Superposition of a Source and Sink of Equal Strength

Consider an irrotational region of flow composed of a line source of strength at

location (-a, 0) and a line sink of the same strength (but opposite sign) at (a, 0), as
sketched in Fig. (1). Generate an expression for the stream function in both Cartesian and
cylindrical coordinates.

Fig. (1) Superposition of a line source of strength at (-a, 0) and a line sink (source of
strength - ) at (a, 0).

We obtain  for the source,

Line source at (-a, 0):

(1)
Similarly for the sink,

Line sink at (a, 0):

(2)

Superposition enables us to simply add the two stream functions, Eqs. 1 and 2, to obtain
the composite stream function,

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Composite stream function:

(3)

Fig. (2) Some useful trigonometric identities

We rearrange Eq. 3 and take the tangent of both sides to get

(4)

We substitute Eqs. 1 and 2 for 1 and 2 and perform some algebra to obtain an
expression for the stream function,

(5)

Final result, Cartesian coordinates:

(6)

Final result, cylindrical coordinates:

(7)

If the source and sink were to switch places, the result would be the same, except that the
negative sign on source strength would disappear.

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Superposition of a Line Sink and a Line Vortex

Our second example is superposition of a line source of strength ( is a negative

quantity in this example) and a line vortex of strength , both located at the origin, Fig.
(2). This represents a region of flow above a drain in a sink or bathtub where fluid spirals
in toward the drain. We can superpose either  or . We choose  and generate the
composite stream function by adding  for a source and  for a line vortex,

Fig. (3) Superposition of a line source of strength and a line vortex of strength  located at
the origin. Vector velocity addition is shown at some arbitrary location in the xy-plane.

Superposition:

(8)

To plot streamlines of the flow, we pick a value of  and then solve for either r as a
function of  or  as a function of r. We choose the former; after some algebra we get

Streamlines:

(9)

We pick some arbitrary values for and  so that we can generate a plot; namely, we
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set = -1.00 m2/s and  = 1.50 m /s. Note that is negative for a sink. Also note
that the units for and  can be obtained easily since we know that the dimensions of
stream function in planar flow are {length2/time}. Streamlines are calculated for several
values of  using Eq. (9) and are plotted in Fig. (4).

The velocity components at any point in the irrotational region of flow are obtained by
differentiating Eq. (8),

Velocity components:

(10)

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Fig. (4) Streamlines created by superposition of a line sink and a line vortex at the origin. Values
of  are in units of m2/s.

We notice that in this simple example, the radial velocity component is due entirely to the
sink, since there is no contribution to radial velocity from the vortex. Similarly, the
tangential velocity component is due entirely to the vortex. The composite velocity at any
point in the flow is the vector sum of these two components, as sketched in Fig. (3).

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