Nonlinear evolution of instabilities behind spheres and disks

We have performed precise and systematic experiments with PIV in order to measure the velocity field in the wake of a solid sphere and of a disk in a water channel, in the range of intermediate Reynolds number in which stationary and oscillatory instabilities appear, including the hairpin shedding regime. From these experimental data, we study the modal decomposition of the streamwise vorticity in an unsteady case and we describe the full nonlinear evolution of the bifurcating branches. We compare these results with recent theoretical and numerical studies on instability in the vortex shedding process at these intermediate Reynolds numbers.