Influence of inlet shear on the 3-D flow past a square cylinder at moderate Reynolds number

Unsteady three-dimensional (3-D) numerical simulations of linear shear flow past a square cylinder at moderate Reynolds number (Re=200) are performed. The shear parameter (K) considered in this study is varied as 0.0, 0.1, and 0.2. For the uniform flow (K=0.0) case, the chosen Re falls in the transition Reynolds number range. The low frequency force pulsations of square cylinder transition phenomena are observed to decrease with increasing shear parameter. The evolution of streamwise vortical structures indicates a mode A spanwise instability in the uniform flow. Unlike in uniform flow, mixed mode A and mode B spanwise instability is observed in the case of a shear flow. The autocorrelation function of the lift and the drag coefficients is improved for any particular separation distance with increasing K.     

Instability of the flow around an impacting sphere

Results from an experimental and numerical study of the flow generated by a sphere immersed in fluid, impacting normally without rebound on a solid wall, are presented. The parameters are the running distance before impact and the sphere Reynolds number. For running lengths less than 7.5 diameters, the sphere wake before impact is axisymmetric in the form of an attached vortex ring. After impact, this ring overtakes the sphere and spreads out along the wall. For Reynolds numbers below 1000, the flow remains axisymmetric at all times. For higher values, perturbations of azimuthal wavenumbers 20–25 are observed on the vortex ring, leading to a breakdown of the flow. We analyse different hypotheses concerning the origin of this instability, with the conclusion that a centrifugal instability mechanism is likely to be acting in this flow. Comparisons are made with the flow involving an isolated vortex ring approaching a wall. Numerical simulations of this case have revealed that two distinct instability mechanisms are operating, one of which appears to be similar to the centrifugal instability observed for the sphere impact.     

Transition on a slender cone in hypervelocity flow

 An experimental exploratory study of laminar, transitional and turbulent boundary layers on a slender, sharp cone at zero incidence in hypervelocity flow was conducted in the shock tunnel T5, whose high operating pressure permits achieving the necessary high Reynolds numbers at high total enthalpy. Surface heat transfer rate and resonantly enhanced flow visualization were used to determine transition location and flow structure. Results suggest that the transition mechanism at the conditions tested is via the Tollmien–Schlichting instability, but since no detailed information about the noise spectrum in the facility is available, a definite conclusion is not possible. A strong, gas-dependent increase of the transition Reynolds number evaluated at the reference temperature on specific total enthalpy was observed. This effect increases monotonically with decreasing the dissociation energy of the gas. Received: 1 February 1996/Accepted: 28 June 1996     

Large Deborah number flows around confined microfluidic cylinders

Viscoelastic flow around a confined cylinder at high Deborah numbers is studied using microfluidic channels. By varying fluid properties and flow rates, a systematic study of the roles of elasticity and inertia is accomplished. Two new elastic flow instabilities that occur at high Deborah numbers are identified. A downstream instability of disordered and temporally varying streamlines is observed at a Deborah number above 10. This instability is a precursor to an unsteady vortex that develops upstream of the cylinder at higher Deborah numbers. Both instabilities occur at moderate Reynolds numbers but are fundamentally elastic. The size and steadiness of the upstream vortex are primarily controlled by the Deborah and the elasticity number.     

Transition phenomena in the wake of an inclined square cylinder

The division of flow regimes in a square cylinder wake at various angles of attack (α) is studied. This study provides evidence of the existence of modes A and B instabilities in the wake of an inclined square cylinder. The critical Reynolds numbers for the inception of these instability modes were identified through the determination of discontinuities in the Strouhal number versus Reynolds number curves. The spectra and time traces of wake streamwise velocity were observed to display three distinct patterns in different flow regimes. Streamwise vortices with different wavelengths at various Reynolds numbers were visualized. A PIV technique was employed to quantitatively measure the parameters of wake vortices. The wavelengths of the streamwise vortices in the modes A and B regimes were measured by using the auto-correlation method. From the present investigation, the square cylinder wake at various angles of attack undergoes a similar transition path to that of a circular cylinder, although various quantitative parameters measured which include the critical Reynolds numbers, spanwise wavelength of secondary vortices, and the circulation and vorticity of wake vortices all show an α dependence.     

Vortex shedding and three-dimensional behaviour of flow past a cylinder confined in a channel

A numerical investigation of the flow past a circular cylinder centred in a two-dimensional channel of varying width is presented. For low Reynolds numbers, the flow is steady. For higher Reynolds numbers, vortices begin to shed periodically from the cylinder. In general, the Strouhal frequency of the shedding vortices increases with blockage ratio. In addition, a two-dimensional instability of the periodic vortex shedding is found, both empirically and by means of a Floquet stability analysis. The instability leads to a beating behaviour in the lift and drag coefficients of the cylinder, which occurs at a Reynolds number higher than the critical Reynolds number for the three-dimensional mode A-type instability, but lower than a Reynolds number for any mode B-type instability.     

Numerical simulation of Reynolds number effects on velocity shear flow around a circular cylinder

Three-dimensional Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) are performed to investigate the shear effects on flow around a circular cylinder at Reynolds numbers of Re=60–1000. The shear parameter, β, which is based on the velocity gradient, cylinder diameter and upstream mean velocity at the center plane of the cylinder, varies from 0 to 0.30. Variations of Strouhal number, drag and lift coefficients, and unsteady wake structures with shear parameter are studied, along with their dependence on Reynolds number. The presented simulation provides detailed information for the flow field around a circular cylinder in shear flow. This study shows that the Strouhal number exhibits no significant variation with shear parameter. The stagnation point moves to the high-velocity side almost linearly with shear parameter, and this result mainly influences the aerodynamic forces acting on a circular cylinder in shear flow. Both the Reynolds number and shear parameter influence the movement of the stagnation point and separation point. Mode A wake instability is suppressed into parallel vortex shedding mode at a certain shear parameter. The lift force increases with increasing shear parameter and acts from the high-velocity side to the low-velocity side. In addition, a simple method to estimate the lift force coefficient in shear flow is provided.     

The absolute instability of boundary-layer flow over viscoelastic walls

The linear stability of boundary-layer flow over a viscoelastic-layer wall is considered. A companion matrix technique is used to formulate the stability problem as a linear matrix eigenvalue problem for complex frequency and all the eigenvalues may be determined without any initial guess values. The eigenvalues are compared with those obtained with an accurate shooting method. The instability character of the boundary-layer flow is further investigated with the purpose of finding the conditions under which the instability of the flow could become absolute. The mapping technique of Kupferet al. (1987) is used to identify the occurrence of absolute instability eigenvalues. Absolute instabilities are discovered for cases of soft damped wall over certain ranges of Reynolds number. The effects of wall material stiffness, damping coefficient, thickness of layer, and Reynolds number on the occurrence of absolute instability are examined and presented.     

Secondary instabilities of the in-phase synchronized wakes past two circular cylinders in side-by-side arrangement

In the present study we investigate the secondary instability of the in-phase synchronized vortex shedding from two side-by-side circular cylinders at low Reynolds numbers. Two distinct Floquet modes become unstable for different values of the Reynolds number and of the non-dimensional gap spacing, leading to the onset of the well-known flip-flop instability of the two cylinder wakes. In both cases the two-dimensional Floquet analysis reveals that at very low Reynolds numbers, a pair of complex-conjugate multipliers crosses the unit circle, showing the same frequency as the biased gap-flow flip-over. In the past literature this behaviour has been often ascribed to a bistability of the flow. On the contrary, the present DNS and stability results provide evidence that at low Reynolds numbers, the flip-flopping behaviour originates from a Neimark–Sacker bifurcation of the in-phase shedding cycle.     

Effect of the pattern of initial perturbations on the steady pipe flow regime

The influence of the inlet flow formation mode on the steady flow regime in a circular pipe has been investigated experimentally. For a given inlet flow formation mode the Reynolds number Re* at which the transition from laminar to turbulent steady flow occurred was determined. With decrease in the Reynolds number the difference between the resistance coefficients for laminar and turbulent flows decreases. At a Reynolds number approximately equal to 1000 the resistance coefficients calculated from the Hagen-Poiseuille formula for laminar steady flow and from the Prandtl formula for turbulent steady flow are equal. Therefore, we may assume that at Re > 1000 steady pipe flow can only be laminar and in this case it is meaningless to speak of a transition from one steady pipe flow regime to the other. The previously published results [1–9] show that the Reynolds number at which laminar goes over into turbulent steady flow decreases with increase in the intensity of the inlet pulsations. However, at the highest inlet pulsation intensities realized experimentally, turbulent flow was observed only at Reynolds numbers higher than a certain value, which in different experiments varied over the range 1900–2320 [10]. In spite of this scatter, it has been assumed that in the experiments a so-called lower critical Reynolds number was determined, such that at higher Reynolds numbers turbulent flow can be observed and at lower Reynolds numbers for any inlet perturbations only steady laminar flow can be realized. In contrast to the lower critical Reynolds number, the Re* values obtained in the present study, were determined for given (not arbitrary) inlet flow formation modes. In this study, it is experimentally shown that the Re* values depend not only on the pipe inlet pulsation intensity but also on the pulsation flow pattern. This result suggests that in the previous experiments the Re* values were determined and that their scatter is related with the different pulsation flow patterns at the pipe inlet. The experimental data so far obtained are insufficient either to determine the lower critical Reynolds number or even to assert that this number exists for a pipe at all.     

Some new characteristics of the confined flow over circular cylinders at low reynolds numbers

This study summarises some new characteristics of the fluid flow over a confined circular cylinder at low Reynolds numbers. Results from both two- and three-dimensional direct numerical simulations are presented at blockage ratio between 0.1 and 0.9 and Reynolds number between 120 and 500. Floquet stability analysis of selected cases will also be presented. From the two-dimensional simulations, it is found that the fluctuating lift forces decreases with blockage ratio and becomes zero (where the flow is steady) at blockage ratio of approximately 0.7–0.8. Upon further increasing the blockage ratio to 0.9, the simulations show a dramatic increase in the fluctuating lift forces, nearly an order of magnitude greater than previously reported for an unconfined cylinder flow. It is also found that for blockage ratio of 0.5, there is a long term two-dimensional instability that becomes more prominent with increasing Reynolds number. This instability has a time scale of approximately 105 time units ($D/U_{\mathit{max}}$) at Reynolds number of 500. In addition, the transition between two- and three-dimensional flow at blockage ratios up to 0.5 is investigated. It is shown that the transition Reynolds number decreases with increasing blockage ratio. At high blockage ratio of 0.5, as we increase the Reynolds number, the transition to three-dimensional flow is shown to go from unsteady two-dimensional to steady three-dimensional before transitioning to unsteady three-dimensional flow.     

Reynolds number effects on a turbulent boundary layer with separation,reattachment, and recovery

The present paper addresses experimental studies of Reynolds number effects on a turbulent boundary layer with separation, reattachment, and recovery. A momentum thickness Reynolds number varies from 1,100 to 20,100 with a wind tunnel enclosed in a pressure vessel by varying the air density and wind tunnel speed. A custom-built, high-resolution laser Doppler anemometer provides fully resolved turbulence measurements over the full Reynolds number range. The experiments show that the mean flow is at most a very weak function of Reynolds number while turbulence quantities strongly depend on Reynolds number. Roller vortices are generated in the separated shear layer caused by the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability. Empirical Reynolds number scalings for the mean velocity and Reynolds stresses are proposed for the upstream boundary layer, the separated region, and the recovery region. The inflectional instability plays a critical role in the scaling in the separated region. The near-wall flow recovers quickly downstream of reattachment even if the outer layer is far from an equilibrium state. As a result, a stress equilibrium layer where a flat-plate boundary layer scaling is valid develops in the recovery region and grows outward moving downstream.     

Taylor instability of a fluid film on a body

The Taylor instability develops in a parallel flows when the body force acts in the direction from the heavier fluid toward the lighter [1]. It has been suggested that an increase in flow vorticity may have a stabilizing influence on the Taylor instability [2]. In studying the hydrodynamic stability of a viscous film on a body in a flow of a low-viscosity fluid [3], the author noted some stabilization of the Taylor instability with increase in Reynolds number, and suggested that cases of complete stabilization of the flow with respect to two-dimensional disturbances are possible with some increase in Reynolds number. In the present investigation, calculations revealed cases in which with increase in Reynolds number the Taylor instability goes over into a Helmholtz instability, which increases with increase in Reynolds number, and also cases in which the Taylor instability completely disappears at some value of the Reynolds number before a Helmholtz instability has developed, i.e., cases of complete stabilization of the flow with respect to two-dimensional disturbances as a result of an increase in Reynolds number.     

An experimental investigation of upstream flow characteristics of viscoelastic fluids in an annular die entry

Flow behaviour of viscoelastic polymer solutions on the upstream side of an annular die entry has been experimentally investigated and compared with published results on entry flow in circular die. Stable and unstable flow patterns were observed depending on the magnitudes of Reynolds and elasticity numbers. The latter number represents the relative effects of elastic and inertial forces. The stable flow region consists of an elasticity-controlled vortex growth regime and an inertia-controlled divergent flow regime. These two flow regimes have also been observed in circular entry flow. The criteria for the onset of flow instability in an annulus, based on the maximum vortex size, agree qualitatively with various criteria proposed for polymer metls and solutions in circular entry flow. The unstable flow patterns revealed a two-stage instability with a metastable region in between. The first-stage instability is characterised by low frequency disruption of the stationary vortex; while the second-stage instability, which occurs at high Reynolds numbers, is characterised by high frequency random distortion of the flow field.     

Experiments on the wavy instability in Rayleigh–Bénard–Poiseuille convection: Spatial and temporal features in the linear and nonlinear regime

An experimental study of a Rayleigh–Bénard–Poiseuille air flow in a rectangular channel is presented. The aim of the paper is to characterize a secondary instability, referred to as wavy instability and known to be a convective instability, with the objective to identify the best conditions for an optimal homogenization of heat transfers in the system. A periodic mechanical forcing is introduced at channel inlet and the spatial and temporal evolution of the temperature fluctuations are analyzed, depending on the Rayleigh and Reynolds numbers, the forcing frequency and the forcing amplitude. As the saturation state is a priori the best situation to homogenize the transfers, the objective is to expand the saturation area and to generate a maximum saturation amplitude value by conducting experiments at high Rayleigh numbers. It is shown that the change in the Rayleigh number value influences the saturation length but does not act on the saturation magnitude while the change in the Reynolds number value causes antagonist effects on the saturation parameters. The key parameter acting on the saturation amplitude is the forcing frequency. The most efficient forcing configuration is to introduce the external perturbation into the fully developed region of the longitudinal rolls and to apply a specific low forcing frequency associated with a moderate forcing magnitude.     

Stability of plane poiseuille flow of a highly elastic liquid

The stability of fully developed pressure driven plane laminar flow of a Maxwell fluid has been studied using linear hydrodynamic stability theory. Elasticity is destabilizing in the inertial regime, but the flow is found to be stable to infinitesimal disturbances at low Reynolds numbers. This result contradicts previous calculations, which predicted a low Reynolds number flow instability at a critical recoverable shear of order unity. The previous calculations were carried out using less accurate numerical methods; the eigenvalue problem which must be solved is a delicate one, requiring sophisticated umerical techniques in order to avoid the calculation of spurious unstable modes.This work has direct bearing on the question of the mechanism of a low Reynolds number extrusion instability known as “melt fracture”. It is observed that the intensity of melt fracture increases with increasing die length for high density polyethylene, and it is therfore believed by some experimentalists that fully-developed die flow is unstable for this polymer above a critical recoverable shear. The analysis appears to be at variance with this interpretation of the experimental results.     

Computation of high Reynolds number flow around a circular cylinder with surface roughness

Incompressible high-Reynolds-number flows around a circular cylinder are analyzed by direct integration of the Navier-Stokes equations using finite-difference method. A generalized coordinate system is used so that a sufficient number of grid points are distributed in the boundary layer and the wake. A numerical scheme which suppresses non-linear instability for calculations of high-Reynolds-number flows is developed. The computation of an impulsively started flow at Re = 1200 is compared with corresponding experimental observations, and excellent agreements are obtained.A series of computations are carried out on the flow around a circular cylinder with surface roughness. The height of the roughness in these computations is 0.5% of the diameter. The range of Reynolds numbers is from 10³ to 10⁵; no turbulence model is employed. Sharp reduction of drag coefficient is observed near Re = 2 × 10⁴, which indicates that the critical Reynolds number is captured in the present computation.     

Onset of shear-layer instability at the interface of parallel Couette flows

A non-planar or a bilateral mixing-layer is studied by means of a series of direct numerical simulations (DNSs). This mixing-layer forms at the interface of two co-current plane Couette flows of different Reynolds numbers. The current DNS study determined the conditions for the onset of shear-layer instability at the interface. The influence of different Reynolds number (of the co-current plane Couette flows) and their Reynolds number ratio on the mixing-layer is studied. A critical Reynolds number of about 500 (or more particularly one of the co-current plane Couette flows must be turbulent) and a Reynolds number ratio greater than 2 is required for the genesis of this bilateral shear-layer instability. Independent of the Reynolds number and the Reynolds number ratio, the temporal evolution of the shear-layer instability followed the same pattern. In addition, the oscillation frequency of the instability was found to increase with increasing Reynolds number and increasing Reynolds number ratio. Further, influence of instability on the local skin friction and the two-point correlation is elaborated on.     

Stability analysis of the onset of vortex shedding for wakes behind flat plates

Above a critical Reynolds number, wake flows behind flat plates become globally unstable, the leading modal instability in this case is known as Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism. In this article, both local and BiGlobal linear instability analyses are performed numerically to study the onset of the shedding process. Flat plates with different base shapes are considered to assess geometry effects, and the relation between the critical shedding Reynolds number, \(Re_\mathrm{cr}\), and the boundary layer thickness is studied. Three types of base shapes are used: square, triangular and elliptic. It is found that the base shape has a great impact on the growth rate of least stable disturbance mode, thus would influence \(Re_\mathrm{cr}\) greatly, but it has little effect on the vortex shedding frequency. The shedding frequency is determined mainly by boundary layer thickness and has little dependence on the Reynolds number and base shape. We find that for a fixed Reynolds number, increasing boundary layer thickness acted in two ways to modify the global stability characteristics: It increases the length of the absolute unstable region and it makes the flow less locally absolutely unstable in the near-wake region, and these two effects work against each other to destabilize or stabilize the flow.     

SOME EXPERIMENTS ON FLOW-INDUCED VIBRATION OF A CIRCULAR CYLINDER WITH SURFACE ROUGHNESS

Aeroelastic instability of a circular cylinder with surface roughness was experimentally studied by free-oscillation tests in a wind tunnel. Flows at high Reynolds numbers could be simulated at relatively low wind velocities, by introducing surface roughness, so as to reduce the value of the critical Reynolds number. The response amplitudes of a roughened cylinder oscillating in the transverse (cross-flow) direction in the flow were measured. The measured range of reduced velocity is about 1·5–8, which includes the critical velocity. The value of a reduced mass-damping parameter (the Scruton number) is constant at about 6. For the aeroelastic instability in the transverse direction, it was found that the oscillation of the roughened cylinder induced by a vortex-excitation is damped down in a small velocity range covering the critical Reynolds number. At Reynolds numbers higher than the critical value, a roughened cylinder vibrates with a large amplitude again, associated with a lock-in phenomenon due to the coincidence of the wake-frequency and the natural frequency of the oscillating cylinder.