ABSTRACT
Questions related to chaotic advection go back to the nineteenth century and the
development of hydrodynamics, especially the introduction of the Navier-Stokes
equations (Claude Navier, 1821 and George Stokes, 1845). The vortex flow case
and the related forms including vortex-lines and filaments, vortex rings, vortex pairs
and vortex systems can be found in the classical book by Horace Lamb, first edited
in 1879 (Lamb, 1879). However, the formulation of a theory that partially explains
the vortex problem and gives results that coincide with the real life situations has
only been achieved in recent years, thanks to progress in computer simulations. The
introduction of terms like chaotic advection and the blinking vortex system appeared
only in last decades, in order to define and analyse specific vortex flow cases.