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A numerical investigation of the flow around rectangular cylinders

The viscous flow around rectangles defined by afterbody length, B, and cross-stream dimension, A, is investigated through a hybrid discrete vortex method. For uniform flow conditions the effects of varying the side ratio, BIA, the angle of incidence, a, and the Reynolds number, Re, are all considered. Pulsating flow results are reported for rectangular cylinders with B/A values of 0.62, 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, a B/A=1.0 cylinder inclined at 45° and a circular cylinder. At a fixed Reynolds number, Re=200, the variation of drag coefficient with side ratio shows CD increasing with decreasing B/A. This contrasts with the known result at higher Reynolds number, 104<Re<105, for which a maximum drag occurs close to BIA=0.6. A peak is observed in both the Strouhal number and lift coefficient close to B/A=0.30. This is explained by the afterbody suppression of the shear layer interaction. In the case of the square cylinder, results are presented for the variation of drag coefficient and Strouhal number with Reynolds number, 50<Re5x103. Good agreement with experiment is shown although for Re>500 the calculated Strouhal number is dual valued. The 'lock-in' characteristics under pulsating flow are shown to be highly dependent on body geometry. All the cylinders are shown to exhibit an asymmetric resonant mode within which the shedding frequency is controlled at half the forcing frequency and the mean forces increase. Several different shedding patterns are predicted across this asymmetric synchronisation range. A 'quasi-symmetric' mode is also observed for some cylinders characterised by near wake symmetry and a substantial reduction in mean forces. A pseudo-phase lag is defined which relates a moment of the lift cycle to a moment of the forcing oscillation. This is shown to change across the synchronisation range of each cylinder considered and the change is found to be greater at lower forcing amplitude.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:246049
Date January 1998
CreatorsSteggel, Nathan
PublisherUniversity of Surrey
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/771936/

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