Vortical

Vortical means pertaining to a vortex or to vortices. In fluid dynamics, the movement of a fluid can be said to be vortical if the fluid moves around in a circle, or in a helix, or if it tends to spin around some axis. Such motion can also be called solenoidal.

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Vortical movement is characterized by non-zero curl:

where v is the velocity vector field of the fluid.

The curl of the velocity (at a specified point of the vector field) yields a vector which points in the direction around which the fluid is rotating.

See also

• Hurricane
• vortex
• vorticity
• coordinate rotation
• Biot-Savart law

References

• Ting, L., "Viscous vortical flows" (Lecture notes in physics). Springer-Verlag 1991. ISBN 3-540-53713-9.