The flow of an incompressible viscous fluid past a sphere is investigated numerically and experimentally over flow regimes including steady and unsteady laminar flow at Reynolds numbers of up to 300. Flow-visualization experiments are used to validate the numerical results and to provide additional insight into the behaviour of the flow. Near-wake visualizations are presented for both steady and unsteady flows. Calculations for Reynolds numbers of up to 200 show steady axisymmetric flow and compare well with previous experimental and numerical observations. For Reynolds numbers of 210 to 270, a steady non-axisymmetric regime is found, also in agreement with previous work. To advance the basic understanding of this transition, a symmetry breaking mechanism is proposed based on a detailed analysis of the calculated flow field.

Unsteady flow is calculated at Reynolds numbers greater than 270. The results at a Reynolds number of 300 show a highly organized periodic flow dominated by vortex shedding. An analysis of the calculated vortical structure of the wake reveals a sequence of shed hairpin vortices in combination with a sequence of previously unidentified induced hairpin vortices. The numerical results compare favourably with experimental flow visualizations which, interestingly, fail to reveal the induced vortices. Based on the deduced symmetry-breaking mechanism, an analysis of the unsteady kinematics, and the experimental results, a mechanism driving the transition to unsteady flow is proposed.