NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSES OF THE FLOW AROUND A HORIZONTAL WALL-MOUNTED CIRCULAR CYLINDER

Abstract

The numerical modeling of two-dimensional turbulent flow around a horizontal wall-mounted circular cylinder at Reynolds numbers in the range of 1000≤ReD≤7000 is investigated. Ansys® 10.0-FLOTRAN program package is used to solve the governing equations by finite element method, and the performance of the standard k-ε, standard k-ω and SST turbulence models are examined. A sensitivity study for the three turbulence models is carried out on eight computational meshes with different densities and structures. The computational velocity fields from the present simulations are compared with the experimental results obtained from particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements for validation purposes. The point of the boundary layer detachment from the cylinder surface and the lengths of primary and secondary separation regions occurring around the cylinder are determined numerically and compared with those obtained experimentally. From these comparisons it is found that the numerical modeling using either of k-ω and SST turbulence models is reasonably successful. Using the results of numerical solutions, the drag and lift coefficients, Cd and Cl, are also calculated and compared with the measured values.