Abstract
A powerful mechanism for the generation of secondary flow, which does not rely on viscous or turbulent stress, is lateral skewing of a shear layer such as that encountered by the body boundary layer in a wing/body junction. For a given entry shear, the characteristics of the secondary flow (a horse-shoe vortex) will depend on the wing nose shape. The effects of three wing nose shapes on the size, position and strength of the horse-shoe vortex have been studied in low-speed flow. As expected, the vortex size and strength increased with nose bluntness; quantitative data describing this effect are presented in this paper. The results include contours of streamwise velocity and secondary velocity plots from which vorticity contours and a non-dimensional circulation were derived. The results should be of use in wing design where this secondary flow needs to be controlled.