The formation process of annular starting jets

The formation and evolution process of the outer vortex ring (denoted as OV0) in annular
starting jets has been studied numerically at stroke ratio 3 Lm/D 8, β 0.8 and
Reynolds number 400 ReR 1400, where D is the outer diameter of orifice, Lm is
the length of the fluid column, β and R are the ratio and difference between inner and
outer radii of the annular orifice, respectively. The initial formation process of OV0 is
found to be similar to that of the leading vortex ring in a circular starting jet, but the
circulation strength is relatively lower and decreases gradually with increasing β. The
pinch-off process will also appear after OV0 grows to a certain size but is different from
that of the circular starting jet. On one hand, OV0 is stretched and deformed by the strain
field generated by the trailing jet’s instability, and vorticity would be shed. On the other
hand, OV0 accelerates the irrotational fluids around it under viscous action so as to form
the induced velocity field, which would consume energy causing it to shed vorticity further
under the limit of the Kelvin–Benjamin variational principle. Furthermore, OV0 would
eventually become a stable vortex ring whose non-dimensional circulation (Γ/(U0maxD))
is found to be between 0.59–0.62 and it would not change with different Lm/D at β = 0.5,
which is much less than the 2–2.5 of circular starting jets.