Abstract
The turbulent flow around a sphere was investigated in a streamwise meridian plane using two experimental techniques: smoke-wire flow visualization in wind tunnel at Re=5,300 and PIV measurements in a circulating water channel at Re=7,400. The smoke-wire visualization shows flow separation points near an azimuthal angle of $90^{\circ}$, recirculating flow, transition from laminar to turbulent shear layer, evolving vortex roll-up and fully turbulent eddies in the sphere wake. In addition, the mean flow pattern extracted by particle tracing method in water tunnel at Re= 14,500 reveals two distinct comparable toroidal(not closed) vortices in the recirculation region. The mean velocity field measured using a PIV technique demonstrates the detailed wake configuration of close symmetric recirculation and near-wake configuration with two toroidal vortices, reversed velocity zone and vorticity contours.