The flow around a surface-mounted cube in uniform and turbulent streams

Abstract

An experimental investigation of the flow around surface-mounted cubes in both uniform, irrotational and sheared, turbulent flows is described. The shear flow was a simulated atmospheric boundary layer with a height ten times the body dimension. Measurements of body surface pressures and mean and fluctuating velocities within the wake are presented. In the latter case a pulsed-wire anemometer was used extensively since the turbulent intensities were much too high for effective use of more standard instrumentation. The clear effects of upstream turbulence and shear on the wake flow are described, comparisons with the somewhat sparse measurements of previous workers are made and the relevance of recent theoretical attempts to describe the flow, as opposed to numerical calculation techniques to predict it, is briefly discussed.