ELEMENTARY IRROTATIONAL PLANE FLOWS

In the following, few examples of elementary irrotational plane flows are shown. Due to the linearity of the Laplace equation, superposition of these simple flow allows for the solution of more complex flow.

In all the examples, equipotential and streamlines are shown in yellow and magenta, respectively. These two families of curves always intersect at right angles.

In order of increasing complexity, we discuss:

• The uniform flow
• The source and the sink
• The vortex
• The dipole
• The doublet
• The flow around a cylinder
• The flow around a cylinder with nonzero circulation