The temporal evolution of Karman vortex shedding patterns in the wake
of a cylinder placed at right angles to a uniform flow is studied for
Reynolds numbers (based on cylinder diameter) between 80 and 140. Focu
sing on the dynamics of the vortex shedding phase in the wake planview
(the plane spanned by the free-stream direction and the cylinder axis
) we study experimentally and model the response of shedding patterns
to time-dependent boundary conditions imposed at the cylinder ends. By
appropriate impulsive changes of end conditions, spanwise wave number
''shocks'' can be produced that travel along the cylinder span. These
shock experiments, together with data from steady oblique shedding pa
tterns, are used to determine the parameters for the spanwise Ginzburg
-Landau model, which has already been used successfully to describe ma
ny of the phenomena observed in cylinder wakes. We then demonstrate ex
perimentally that, in analogy to gasdynamics, it is also possible to p
roduce ''expansion waves'' of the spanwise wave number, which are well
described by the Ginzburg-Landau model without further adjustment of
its parameters. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.