Near wake interactions and drag increase regimes for a square-back bluff body

Abstract

The three-dimensional near wake of a square-back bluff body in ground proximity is experimentally perturbed by placing a pair of D-shaped obstacles under the body. Five obstacle widths $d$ , from 12 % to 26 % of the height of the body, are used to perform a sensitivity study of the body's pressure drag by varying the relative distance $l$ between the obstacle pair and the base. Two successive drag-sensitive regimes are identified for obstacle-to-base distances $l/d < 2.5$ , where the pressure drag of the body is increased up to 22 %. In different regimes, the flow dynamics measured downstream of the obstacles are found to be very different. When the obstacles are the closest to the base, $l/d<1.5$ , the pressure drag changes of the main body are driven by mean merging between the wakes of the obstacles and of the main body, and scale with $d$ . Contrarily, when the obstacles are located farther from the base, $1.5< l/d<2.5$ , the wakes of the obstacles are isolated from the main body wake. Here the dynamics of the obstacle wake drive the pressure drag changes of the main body, which scale with $d^{2}$ . In both regimes, we measure a mean mass transfer from the wake of the main body to the wakes of the obstacles. This is the main mechanism responsible for the pressure drag changes. Using our results and reference studies describing the effects of base suction on the pressure drag of bluff bodies, a physical model is proposed to explain the contrasting scalings of the pressure drag increase in the different regimes observed in this study.