A Comparative Analysis of Flow Fields around a Composite Hydrokinetic Device

Abstract

. The flow pattern on the combined effect of a horizontal cylinder and a vertical plate is observed and analysed in this experimental study. The experiment was conducted with a 4 cm outer diameter cylinder arranged horizontally across flow above 2 cm from the bed and a vertical plate of 5 cm placed 9 cm downstream from cylinder surface reference as tilting flume bed surface. The water depth was maintained at 17 cm through a constant discharge of 35 lps in a re-circulating flume. Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) was used to store the velocity fluctuation of velocity components and further used as a pictorial frame to understand the turbulence and the turbulent kinetic energy around the cylinder, plate and in between the cylinder - vertical plate. From the pictorial contour diagrams drawn, the velocity vector represents the flow feature over the cylinder and it is found that a horseshoe vortex, developed upstream of the plate, does effect on turbulent kinetic energy formed in between cylinder and vertical plate. The observation and obtained results from present study is compared with a 5 cm horizontal cylinder above 2 cm from the bed and a plate situated on 5.5 cm from cylinder curvature towards downstream.