A pattern recognition technique has been applied to simultaneously sampled multipoint hot-wire anemometry data obtained in the far wake of a circular cylinder. Data from both the streamwise fluctuating velocity field and the temperature field have been analysed employing a computer code that uses a correlation approach to automatically detect and ensemble average flow patterns and patterns for mean-square fluctuations. Statistical tests then allow the significance and contribution to the turbulence intensity of the detected structures to be evaluated. This procedure has been used to infer the three-dimensional topology of the double-roller eddies previously identified in the far-wake region and to relate these to the motions responsible for entrainment. It appears that the two types of motion are not independent, but are linked together, forming parts of horseshoe vortex structures which account for at least 40% of the total turbulence energy. These structures originate near the centre of the flow, may extend across the centreline and typically occur in groups of about three. The resulting picture of the flow dynamics is related to the conclusions drawn from similar data by other workers and a possible regeneration mechanism is presented. The addition to the code of a fine-scale activity indicator, the choice of which is discussed in some detail, has allowed the relationship between these energetic large-scale motions and smaller eddies to be investigated. It seems that the most intense fine-scale activity is associated with the vortical cores of the double-roller eddies. It is shown that this observation is consistent with the concepts of ‘isotropy’ and ‘spotiness’ of the dissipative scales. It also suggests that the horseshoe vortices loose energy both to their own secondary instabilities and to smaller scales resulting from the breakup of other highly strained large eddies.

A new explanation of the vortex tube is presented. The proposed model leads to an equivalent unsteady-flow analysis for the development of the flow in the vortex tube. Using this analysis, radial distributions of velocity and temperature can now be calculated at successive axial positions in the tube. Many characteristics of these calculated profiles are found to be in qualitative agreement with corresponding experimental profiles. The qualitative similarity in the development of the calculated and experimental sets profiles with axial position is considered especially significant.

A theory of vortex-tube performance based upon an idealized three-dimensional flow pattern for the vortex tube is derived. Some experiments relating the idealized vortex tube analysed to previous vortex-tube measurements are described. The performance curves obtained from the theory resemble those measured. An important additional effect predicted by the theory is that both the hot and the cold temperature differences should increase as the effective height of the inlet nozzle increases, and this result has been substantiated by experiment.

The purpose of the present study is to characterize the process of laminar–turbulent transition at Reynolds numbers which are subcritical from the two-dimensional linear point of view. The development of a point-like disturbance was studied in an air flow channel with hot-wire anemometry at a Reynolds number of 1600. Localized disturbances were triggered at one of the walls and their development followed downstream by traversing the hot-wire probe in the streamwise direction over a distance of 90 half channel heights, as well as in the normal and spanwise directions. The disturbance evolved into elongated streaky structures with strong spanwise shear (i.e. normal vorticity) which grew in amplitude and streamwise extension and thereafter either decayed or gave rise to a turbulent spot. The results indicate that the mechanism underlying the initial growth is a linear one resulting from the coupling between the normal velocity and the normal vorticity, as described by the three-dimensional linear equations. The nonlinear development of the structure leads to the formation of intense normal shear layers and the appearance of oscillations and ‘spikes’, which multiply and form the rear or a turbulent spot.

Laminar boundary-layer separation in the supersonic flow past a corner point on a rigid body contour, also termed the compression ramp, is considered based on the viscous–inviscid interaction concept. The ‘triple-deck model’ is used to describe the interaction process. The governing equations of the interaction may be formally derived from the Navier–Stokes equations if the ramp angle θ is represented as θ = θ0Re−1/4, where θ0 is an order-one quantity and Re is the Reynolds number, assumed large. To solve the interaction problem two numerical methods have been used. The first method employs a finite-difference approximation of the governing equations with respect to both the streamwise and wall-normal coordinates. The resulting algebraic equations are linearized using a Newton–Raphson strategy and then solved with the Thomas-matrix technique. The second method uses finite differences in the streamwise direction in combination with Chebychev collocation in the normal direction and Newton–Raphson linearization.

Our main concern is with the flow behaviour at large values of θ0. The calculations show that as the ramp angle θ0 increases, additional eddies form near the corner point inside the separation region. The behaviour of the solution does not give any indication that there exists a critical value θ*0 of the ramp angle θ0, as suggested by Smith & Khorrami (1991) who claimed that as θ0 approaches θ*0, a singularity develops near the reattachment point, preventing the continuation of the solution beyond θ*0. Instead we find that the numerical solution agrees with Neiland's (1970) theory of reattachment, which does not involve any restriction upon the ramp angle.

Viscous fingering experiments in Hele-Shaw cells lead to striking pattern formations which have been the subject of intense focus among the physics and applied mathematics community for many years. In recent times, much attention has been devoted to devising strategies for controlling such patterns and reducing the growth of the interfacial fingers. We continue this research by reporting on numerical simulations, based on the level set method, of a generalised Hele-Shaw model for which the geometry of the Hele-Shaw cell is altered. First, we investigate how imposing constant and time-dependent injection rates in a Hele-Shaw cell that is either standard, tapered or rotating can be used to reduce the development of viscous fingering when an inviscid fluid is injected into a viscous fluid over a finite time period. We perform a series of numerical experiments comparing the effectiveness of each strategy to determine how these non-standard Hele-Shaw configurations influence the morphological features of the inviscid–viscous fluid interface. Surprisingly, a converging or diverging taper of the plates leads to reduced metrics of viscous fingering at the final time when compared to the standard parallel configuration, especially with carefully chosen injection rates; for the rotating plate case, the effect is even more dramatic, with sufficiently large rotation rates completely stabilising the interface. Next, we illustrate how the number of non-splitting fingers can be controlled by injecting the inviscid fluid at a time-dependent rate while increasing the gap between the plates. Our simulations compare well with previous experimental results for various injection rates and geometric configurations. We demonstrate how the number of non-splitting fingers agrees with that predicted from linear stability theory up to some finger number; for larger values of our control parameter, the fully nonlinear dynamics of the problem leads to slightly fewer fingers than this linear prediction.

Numerical evidence of the existence of edge waves travelling along a periodic coastline consisting of a straight and vertical cliff face from which protrudes an infinite number of identical rectangular barriers, each extending throughout the water depth, is given based on a Galerkin approximation to an integral representation of the problem derived using the linear theory of water waves.

Numerical methods are used to investigate the steady two-dimensional motion of a viscous incompressible fluid past a flat plate of finite breadth at zero incidence to a uniform stream. Before application of numerical techniques, the governing partial differential equations for the stream function and vorticity are reduced to ordinary differential equations by an adaptation of methods normally used to solve Oseen's linearized equations. The complete range of the Reynolds number R is considered, from indefinitely small to indefinitely large. All the results are intended to represent solutions of the full Navier-Stokes equations of motion, although in practice approximations are inevitable. These are mainly brought about by the necessity of limiting the size of the calculations.

At the lower end of the Reynolds-number range, the calculated frictional drag coefficient agrees well with the results of Tomotika & Aoi (1953) based on Oseen's equations. At intermediate and higher Reynolds numbers there is good agreement with the experimental results of Janour (1951) and with the improvement of the Blasius solution given by Kuo (1953). Finally a limiting solution is obtained as R → ∞. This shows that the drag coefficient is proportional to R−½, in accordance with boundary-layer theory. The actual calculated value of the coefficient is about 4% higher than the Blasius value.

Although the present results tend generally to confirm the trend of the recently published results at R = 0·1, 1 and 10 of Janssen (1957), there are substantial discrepancies in the detailed results in a number of instances. In particular, the drag values obtained at R = 1 and 10 are some 20% higher than Janssen's although there is reasonable agreement at R = 0·1. It seems possible that Janssen's analogue is a little crude at the higher Reynolds numbers.

The imbibition of liquid into a capillary tube is studied both theoretically and experimentally for sufficiently long tubes where viscous resistance from the gas phase ahead of the moving front is significant. At early times, and as the length of the tube is increased, we observe a systematic deviation from classical theory that cannot be attributed to the inertia of the liquid nor entrance effects. Instead, this behaviour is rationalized by considering the viscous resistance from the gas as it is displaced by the liquid. An explicit analytical solution for a one-dimensional description of the flow is given that accounts for viscous resistance from the displaced fluid. Excellent agreement between experiment and theory is obtained.

Direct numerical simulations are used to examine the behaviour of wall-pressure fluctuations $p_{w}$ in a flat-plate turbulent boundary layer with large adverse and favourable pressure gradients, involving separation and reattachment. The Reynolds number $Re_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}$ based on momentum thickness is equal to 300, 600 and 900. Particular attention is given to effects of Reynolds number on root-mean-square (r.m.s.) values, frequency/power spectra and instantaneous fields. The possible scaling laws are also examined as compared with the existing direct numerical simulation and experimental data. The r.m.s. value of $p_{w}$ normalized by the local maximum Reynolds shear stress $-\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}\overline{uv}_{max}$ (Simpson et al. J. Fluid Mech. vol. 177, 1987, pp. 167–186; Na & Moin J. Fluid Mech. vol. 377, 1998b, pp. 347–373) leads to near plateau (i.e. $p_{w\,rms}/-\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}\overline{uv}_{max}=2.5\sim 3$) in the adverse pressure gradient and separated regions in which the frequency spectra exhibit good collapse at low frequencies. The magnitude of $p_{w\,rms}/-\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}\overline{uv}_{max}$ is however reduced down to 1.8 near reattachment where good collapse is also obtained with normalization by the local maximum wall-normal Reynolds stress $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}\overline{vv}_{max}$. Near reattachment, $p_{w\,rms}/-\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}\overline{vv}_{max}=1.2$ is attained unambiguously independently of the Reynolds number and pressure gradient. The present magnitude (1.2) is smaller than (1.35) obtained for step-induced separation by Ji & Wang (J. Fluid Mech. vol. 712, 2012, pp. 471–504). The reason for this difference is intrinsically associated with convective nature of a pressure-induced separation bubble near reattachment where the magnitude of $p_{w\,rms}$ depends essentially on the favourable pressure gradient. The resulting mean flow acceleration leads to delay of the r.m.s. peak after reattachment. Attention is also given to structures of $p_{w}$. It is shown that large-scale spanwise rollers of low pressure fluctuations are formed above the bubble, whilst changing to large-scale streamwise elongated structures after reattachment. These large-scale structures become more prominent with increasing $Re_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}$ and affect $p_{w}$ significantly.

In this study, direct numerical simulations and high-resolved large eddy simulations of turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection were conducted with a fluid of Prandtl number Pr = 0.7 in a long rectangular cell of aspect ratio unity in the cross-section and periodic boundaries in a horizontal longitudinal direction. The analysis of the thermal and kinetic energy spectra suggests that temperature and velocity fields are correlated within the thermal boundary layers and tend to be uncorrelated in the core region of the flow. A tendency of decorrelation of the temperature and velocity fields is also observed for increasing Ra when the flow has become fully turbulent, which is thought to characterize this regime. This argument is also supported by the analysis of the correlation of the turbulent fluctuations |u|′ and θ′. The plume and mixing layer dominated region is found to be separated from the thermal dissipation rates of the bulk and conductive sublayer by the inflection points of the probability density function (PDF). In order to analyse the contributions of bulk, boundary layers and plumes to the mean heat transfer, the thermal dissipation rate PDFs of four different Ra are integrated over these three regions. Hence, it is shown that the core region is dominated by the turbulent fluctuations of the thermal dissipation rate throughout the range of simulated Ra, whereas the contributions from the conductive sublayer due to turbulent fluctuations increase rapidly with Ra. The latter contradicts results by He, Tong & Xia (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 98, 2007). The results also show that the plumes and mixing layers are increasingly dominated by the mean gradient contributions. The PDFs of the core region are compared to an analytical scaling law for passive scalar turbulence which is found to be in good agreement with the results of the present study. It is noted that the core region scaling seems to approach the behaviour of a passive scalar as Ra increases, i.e. it changes from pure exponential to a stretched exponential scaling.

Recent microfluidic experiments by Bremond, Thiam & Bibette (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 100, 2008, paper no. 024501), along with simulations by Yoon et al. (Phys. Fluid, vol. 19, 2007, paper no. 102102) and near-contact experiments and simulations by Manica et al. (Langmuir, vol. 24, 2008, pp. 1381–1390), have demonstrated that two droplets can coalesce as they are separating rather than upon their collision. We analyse the experimental microfluidic flow configuration for the approach to contact with a two-dimensional model: we apply a lubrication analysis followed by the method of domain perturbation to determine the droplet deformation as a function of time. We find the approximate shape for the deformed droplet at the time of contact. In particular, for droplets of radius R, moving apart according to h0(t) = h0(0) + αt2, where 2h0(t) is the separation distance, we define a non-dimensional parameter A=4CμR2α1/2/πγ[h0(0)]3/2, where μ is the viscosity of the continuous phase; γ is the interfacial tension; and C depends on the viscosity ratio between the droplets and the continuous phase. Our model suggests that there exists a critical value Acrit = 16/33/2 ≈ 3.0792, below which separation is unlikely to facilitate the coalescence of the droplets. The predictions are in good agreement with available experimental data.

The head of an intrusive flow advancing along the interface between two fluids is studied experimentally when the two layers are of equal depth and the density of the intrusion is the mean of the two densities. The dependence of the flow on the interface thickness and the depth of the intrusion is determined. When the interface is very thin the flow is similar to the nominally inviscid gravity currents observed by Britter & Simpson (1978).

Geophysical granular flows, such as avalanches, debris flows, lahars and pyroclastic flows, are always strongly influenced by the basal topography that they flow over. In particular, localised bumps or obstacles can generate rapid changes in the flow thickness and velocity, or shock waves, which dissipate significant amounts of energy. Understanding how a granular material is affected by the underlying topography is therefore crucial for hazard mitigation purposes, for example to improve the design of deflecting or catching dams for snow avalanches. Moreover, the interactions with solid boundaries can also have important applications in industrial processes. In this paper, small-scale experiments are performed to investigate the flow of a granular avalanche over a two-dimensional smooth symmetrical bump. The experiments show that, depending on the initial conditions, two different steady-state regimes can be observed: either the formation of a detached jet downstream of the bump, or a shock upstream of it. The transition between the two cases can be controlled by adding varying amounts of erodible particles in front of the obstacle. A depth-averaged terrain-following avalanche theory that is formulated in curvilinear coordinates is used to model the system. The results show good agreement with the experiments for both regimes. For the case of a shock, time-dependent numerical simulations of the full system show the evolution to the equilibrium state, as well as the deposition of particles upstream of the bump when the inflow ceases. The terrain-following theory is compared to a standard depth-averaged avalanche model in an aligned Cartesian coordinate system. For this very sensitive problem, it is shown that the steady-shock regime is captured significantly better by the terrain-following avalanche model, and that the standard theory is unable to predict the take-off point of the jet. To retain the practical simplicity of using Cartesian coordinates, but have the improved predictive power of the terrain-following model, a coordinate mapping is used to transform the terrain-following equations from curvilinear to Cartesian coordinates. The terrain-following model, in Cartesian coordinates, makes identical predictions to the original curvilinear formulation, but is much simpler to implement.

A large-eddy simulation of laminar transonic buffet on an airfoil at a Mach number $M=0.735$, an angle of attack $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}=4^{\circ }$, a Reynolds number $Re_{c}=3\times 10^{6}$ has been carried out. The boundary layer is laminar up to the shock foot and laminar/turbulent transition occurs in the separation bubble at the shock foot. Contrary to the turbulent case for which wall pressure spectra are characterised by well-marked peaks at low frequencies ($St=f\cdot c/U_{\infty }\simeq 0.06{-}0.07$, where $St$ is the Strouhal number, $f$ the shock oscillation frequency, $c$ the chord length and $U_{\infty }$ the free-stream velocity), in the laminar case, there are also well-marked peaks but at a much higher frequency ($St=1.2$). The shock oscillation amplitude is also lower: 6 % of chord and limited to the shock foot area in the laminar case instead of 20 % with a whole shock oscillation and intermittent boundary layer separation and reattachment in the turbulent case. The analysis of the phase-averaged fields allowed linking of the frequency of the laminar transonic buffet to a separation bubble breathing phenomenon associated with a vortex shedding mechanism. These vortices are convected at $U_{c}/U_{\infty }\simeq 0.4$ (where $U_{c}$ is the convection velocity). The main finding of the present paper is that the higher frequency of the shock oscillation in the laminar regime is due to a different mechanism than in the turbulent one: laminar transonic buffet is due to a separation bubble breathing phenomenon occurring at the shock foot.

We present direct numerical simulations (DNS) of unforced stratified turbulence with the objective of testing the strongly stratified turbulence theory. According to this theory the characteristic vertical scale of the turbulence is given by $\ell _{v}\sim u_{h}/N$, where $u_{h}$ is the horizontal velocity scale and $N$ the Brunt–Väisälä frequency. Combined with the hypothesis of the energy dissipation rate scaling as ${\it\epsilon}\sim u_{h}^{3}/\ell _{h}$, this theory predicts inertial range scalings for the horizontal spectrum of horizontal kinetic energy and of potential energy, according to $E(k_{h})\propto k_{h}^{-5/3}$. We begin by presenting a scaling analysis of the horizontal vorticity equation from which we recover the result regarding the vertical scale, $\ell _{v}\sim u_{h}/N$, highlighting in the process the important dynamical role of large-scale vertical shear of horizontal velocity. We then present the results from decaying DNS, which show a good agreement with aspects of the theory. In particular, the vertical Froude number is found to reach a constant plateau in time, of the form $Fr_{v}=u_{h}/(N\ell _{v})=C$ with $C=O(1)$ in all the runs. The derivation of the dissipation scaling ${\it\epsilon}\sim u_{h}^{3}/\ell _{h}$ at low Reynolds number in the context of decaying stratified turbulence highlights that the same scaling holds at high $\mathscr{R}=ReFr_{h}^{2}\gg 1$ as well as at low $\mathscr{R}\ll 1$, which is known (see Brethouwer et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 585, 2007, pp. 343–368) but not sufficiently emphasized in recent literature. We find evidence in our DNS of the dissipation scaling holding at $\mathscr{R}=O(1)$, which we interpret as being in the viscous regime. We also find ${\it\epsilon}_{k}\sim u_{h}^{3}/\ell _{h}$ and ${\it\epsilon}_{p}\sim u_{h}^{3}/\ell _{h}$ (with ${\it\epsilon}={\it\epsilon}_{k}+{\it\epsilon}_{p}$), in our high-resolution run at earlier times corresponding to $\mathscr{R}=O(10)$, which is in the transition between the strongly stratified and the viscous regimes. The horizontal spectrum of horizontal kinetic energy collapses in time using the scaling $E_{h}(k_{h})=C_{1}{\it\epsilon}_{k}^{2/3}k_{h}^{-5/3}$ and the horizontal potential energy spectrum is well described by $E_{p}(k_{h})=C_{2}{\it\epsilon}_{p}{\it\epsilon}_{k}^{-1/3}k_{h}^{-5/3}$. The presence of an inertial range in the horizontal direction is confirmed by the constancy of the energy flux spectrum over narrow ranges of $k_{h}$. However, the vertical energy spectrum is found to differ significantly from the expected $E_{h}(k_{v})\sim N^{2}k_{v}^{-3}$ scaling, showing that $Fr_{v}$ is not of order unity on a scale-by-scale basis, thus providing motivation for further investigation of the vertical structure of stratified turbulence.

Mixed-layer deepening due to grid-generated turbulence is studied experimentally with the aim of explaining the contradictory results of previous studies. Entrainment rates are calculated at fixed distances from the grid in order to avoid the necessity of using an empirical expression for the decay of the turbulent velocity scale. It is shown that an incorrect form of this decay law can cause large errors in the predicted Richardson number dependence of the entrainment rate. For this study this dependence can be expressed as a power law of the form E = KRi−1,2. The spread of the results imply that an error of at least ± 10% is realistic in the determination of the exponent.

The turbulent velocity decay law is also deduced from the data, and it is found that the decay cannot be represented by a simple power law. Indeed two distinct flow regions, with differing decay rates, are present.

The overall pattern of normal modes of parallel flow of inviscid stratified fluid is examined. For a given flow and wavenumber the modes are divided into five classes, some of which may be empty: (i) a finite class of non-singular unstable modes; (ii) a conjugate finite class of non-singular damped stable modes; (iii) a finite class of singular stable modes, each of these having a branch point and being the limit of unstable modes; (iv) a discrete class of modified internal gravity waves, these being non-singular stable modes (if the density decreases with height everywhere); (v) a continuous class of singular stable modes. The modified internal gravity waves are described asymptotically for large values of the Richardson number. These asymptotic results are related to and extended by numerical calculations for a sinusoidal basic velocity profile and a Bickley jet. The wave speeds for small values of the Richardson number are found to depend only upon the local behaviour of the mean flow near an overall simple maximum or minimum of the velocity profile. Finally some difficulties in the use of the Howard formula for perturbation at a curve of marginal stability are elucidated.

This paper presents both linear and nonlinear analyses of extreme responses for a multi-body wave energy converter (WEC) in severe sea states. The WEC known as M4 consists of three cylindrical floats with diameters and draft which increase from bow to stern with the larger mid and stern floats having rounded bases so that the overall system has negligible drag effects. The bow and mid float are rigidly connected by a beam and the stern float is connected by a beam to a hinge above the mid float where the rotational relative motion would be damped to absorb power in operational conditions. A range of focussed wave groups representing extreme waves were tested on a scale model without hinge damping, also representing a more general system of interconnected cylindrical floats with multi-mode forcing. Importantly, the analysis reveals a predominantly linear response structure in hinge angle and weakly nonlinear response for the beam bending moment, while effects due to drift forces, expected to be predominantly second order, are not accounted for. There are also complex and violent free-surface effects on the model during the excitation period driven by the main wave group, which generally reduce the overall motion response. Once the main group has moved away, the decaying response in the free-vibration phase decays at a rate very close to that predicted by simple linear radiation damping. Two types of nonlinear harmonic motion are demonstrated. During the free-vibration phase, there are only double and triple frequency Stokes harmonics of the linear motion, captured using a frequency doubling and tripling model. In contrast, during the excitation phase, these harmonics show much more complex behaviour associated with nonlinear fluid loading. Although bound harmonics are visible in the system response, the overall response is remarkably linear until temporary submergence of the central float (‘dunking’) occurs. This provides a strong stabilising effect for angular amplitudes greater than ${\sim}30^{\circ }$ and can be treated as a temporary loss of part of the driving wave as long as submergence continues. With an experimentally and numerically derived response amplitude operator (RAO), we perform a statistical analysis of extreme response for the hinge angle based on wave data at Orkney, well known for its severe wave climate, using the NORA10 wave hindcast. For storms with spectral peak wave periods longer than the RAO peak period, the response is controlled by the steepness of the sea state rather than the wave height. Thus, the system responds very similarly under the most extreme sea states, providing an upper bound for the most probable maximum response, which is reduced significantly in directionally spread waves. The methodology presented here is relevant to other single and multi-body systems including WECs. We also demonstrate a general and potentially important reciprocity result for linear body motion in random seas: the averaged wave history given an extreme system response and the average response history given an extreme wave match in time, with time reversed for one of the signals. This relationship will provide an efficient and robust way of defining a ‘designer wave’, for both experimental testing and computationally intensive computational fluid dynamics (CFD), for a wide range of wave–structure interaction problems.

Two plates placed in tandem in a duct flow shed vortices, which can excite and sustain an acoustic resonance associated with the duct. The sound can in turn ‘feed back’ and ‘lock’ the vortex shedding rate to the sound frequency. The experimental conditions under which loud resonant sound is sustained are described in this paper. The acoustic sources are predicted by combining a vortex model of the flow field with a finite-element solution of the sound field, and then using Howe's theory of aerodynamic sound to calculate the energy exchange between the flow and the sound field. Only in certain regions near the plates is substantial net energy exchange possible; the direction of energy transfer depends on the spacing of the plates. The region around the trailing edge of the upstream plate is found to be always a net acoustic source during resonance, while the region around the downstream plate is a net source or sink depending on the phase of the acoustic cycle at which vortices arrive there, which in turn depends on plate spacing and flow velocity. The net source region around the downstream plate is suppressed over a wide range of plate spacings by splitting this plate at midspan and rejoining it so that one half is offset in the flow direction by the distance a vortex travels in half a sound cycle.

A series of experiments were conducted in water to study mixing in the field of a single, two-dimensional vortex. The experimental configuration is that of a laminar line vortex initiated along a diffusion layer between two streams of different scalar concentrations. Measurements of passive scalars in inert and chemically reactive environments were made using a planar laser-induced fluorescence technique. A fast acid/base isothermal reaction was utilized to highlight the molecular mixing. The experimental results show that the mixing enhancement in the presence of a vortex is linearly dependent on the vortex strength and the time elapsed since vortex initiation. In particular, the mixedness, defined as the spatially integrated second moment of concentration field in the vortex, and the spatially averaged scalar dissipation are found to follow this dependence. This variation is mainly attributed to the contact area generation along the diffusion layers between the two streams as a result of inviscid deformations in the vortical flow field. The results presented pertain to mixing in liquids and in the limit of high Schmidt numbers.