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Cylinder-wall interference effects on finite-length wavy cylinders at subcritical Reynolds number flows

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Abstract

An experimental study was conducted on aspect-ratio of six finite-length wavy cylinders immersed within a Re D = 2,700 free-stream. Wavelengths of 2 and 4 diameters, as well as wave amplitude of 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 diameters were used for a comprehensive investigation. Time-resolved particle-image velocimetry measurements and proper orthogonal decomposition analyses show that for the present large wavelength wavy cylinders, vortex-shedding behaviour of high aspect-ratio wavy cylinders observed in past studies can be altered through variations in the aspect-ratio, exact geometric node and saddle locations, as well as the presence of end-walls. This is due to the persistent formation of recirculating regions close to the end-walls under certain wavy cylinder configurations, which affect the distributions of spanwise flows and vortex formation lengths. Vortex-shedding behaviour of smaller-wavelength wavy cylinders has also been observed to be considerably less sensitive to variations in the physical configurations, due to the formation of multiple streamwise vortices at the saddles. The presence of these coherent streamwise vortices is postulated to play a key role in significantly reducing flow-altering effects associated with the end-walls.

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Abbreviations

a :

Wave amplitude

D :

Local cylinder diameter

D m :

Mean cylinder diameter

D max :

Maximum cylinder diameter

D min :

Minimum cylinder diameter

f :

Vortex-shedding frequency

L :

Cylinder length

L fc :

Vortex formation length based on wake closure

L fu :

Vortex formation length based on maximum streamwise velocity fluctuation

u :

Streamwise velocity component

u rms :

Streamwise velocity fluctuation

U :

Mean free-stream velocity

w :

Spanwise velocity component

x :

Streamwise distance from cylinder origin

y :

Cross-stream distance from cylinder origin

z :

Spanwise distance from cylinder origin

Re D :

Reynolds number (ρUDm/μ)

StD :

Vortex-shedding Strouhal number (fDm/U)

λ :

Wavelength

δ :

Boundary layer thickness

ρ :

Density

μ :

Dynamic viscosity

ζ :

Vorticity

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support for the present study by Nanyang Technological University under the Tan Chin Tuan Exchange Fellowship in Engineering programme and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 51106096).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    T. H. New

  2. Key Laboratory for Power Machinery and Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Shengxian Shi & Yingzheng Liu

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  1. T. H. New
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  2. Shengxian Shi
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Correspondence to T. H. New.

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New, T.H., Shi, S. & Liu, Y. Cylinder-wall interference effects on finite-length wavy cylinders at subcritical Reynolds number flows. Exp Fluids 54, 1601 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00348-013-1601-8

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