The vortex wave is a very interesting standing wave which occurs during pulsatile flow past a channel backstep. There is much about this wave which we do not understand but it has been both observed (see Sobey 1985) and calculated from the Navier-Stokes equations (see Deblois, Sobey & Alani 1992).

This flow structure has been used to enhance mixing and mass transfer in devices for filtering blood, culturing cells and concentrating protein. A vortex wave device is made by sandwiching a ladder with off-set rungs between two flat membranes and attaching oscillatory bellows at each end of the channel to superpose an oscillatory flow on a much smaller mean flow.

These devices are easy to fabricate and can be used with delicate or brittle membranes. See also Unsteady dispersion.

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