The behaviour of a viscous vortex ring is examined by a matched asymptotic analysis up to three orders. This study aims at investigating how much the location of maximum vorticity deviates from the centroid of the vortex ring, defined by P. G. Saffman (1970). All the results are presented in dimensionless form, as indicated in the following context. Let
Γ
be the initial circulation of the vortex ring, and
R
denote the ring radius normalized by its initial radius
R
i
. For the asymptotic analysis, a small parameter ∊ = (
t
/
Re
)
½
is introduced, where
t
denotes time normalized by
R
2
i
/
Γ
, and
Re = Γ/v
is the Reynolds number defined with
Γ
and the kinematic viscosity
v
. Our analysis shows that the trajectory of maximum vorticity moves with the velocity (normalized by
Γ/R
i
)
U
m
= – 1/4π
R
{ln 4
R
/∊ +
H
m
} +
O
(∊ ln ∊), where
H
m
=
H
m
(
Re, t
) depends on the Reynolds number
Re
and may change slightly with time
t
for the initial motion. For the centroid of the vortex ring, we obtain the velocity
U
c
by merely replacing
H
m
by
H
c
, which is a constant –0.558 for all values of the Reynolds number. Only in the limit of
Re
→ ∞, the values of
H
m
and
H
c
are found to coincide with each other, while the deviation of
H
m
from the constant
H
c
is getting significant with decreasing the Reynolds number. Also of interest is that the radial motion is shown to exist for the trajectory of maximum vorticity at finite Reynolds numbers. Furthermore, the present analysis clarifies the earlier discrepancy between Saffman’s result and that obtained by C. Tung and L. Ting (1967).
