Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2006
A Lavrentiev model of the flow about a blunt two-dimensional body with a separation bubble is considered. Physical bases of the model are discussed in relation to other wake models. The Lavrentiev wake bubble contains a pair of closed free streamlines enclosing the regions of vorticity. It is shown, by means of conformal mapping, that the complex potential can be expressed in terms of elliptic functions, and a one-parameter family of exact solutions has been constructed for a normal flat plate and truncated wedges, for both an unbounded and a bounded stream. A procedure for relating the value of the parameter to the Reynolds number of the real fluid flow is indicated.