Flow past an elliptic cylinder

A theoretical investigation of the unsteady two-dimensional flow of a viscous, incompressible fluid normal to a thin elliptic cylinder is described. The cylinder, which is started impulsively from rest in an open field, continues to move with uniform velocity for the remainder of the problem. Using a vorticity-streamfunction formulation of the full Navier-Stokes equations, transformation techniques are employed to find the initial flow. Strategies which employ boundary layer theory and series expansions of the flow variables to find flow solutions for small values of time are outlined.