On the fusion of a line plume into a large scale vortex cloud

A flow-visualization experiment was carried out in a water tank to explore the basic features of the convection effect of a line plume encountering an inversion of finite dimensions. As a line plume ascends, its passage is impeded by an inversion of finite dimensions. It was hypothesized that due to the finite extent of this blockage, the line plume, being dragged along by the buoyancy force, is coerced to longitudinally stretch - circumventing the inversion, and thus intensifying the vorticity in the plume. As in a line plume, when buoyancy is released steadily, it would seem that as the number of vortex lines arriving at the inversion increases, the vorticity intensification due to stretching in combination with the co-rotating of same signed vortices and viscous diffusion, causes the fusion of the vortex line upstream of the inversion to take place thus forming a large scale vortex pair cloud. This exploratory study seeks to obtain confirmation of the occurrence of fusion of a plume into a large scale vortical flow.