Coherence and Reynolds stresses in the turbulent wake behind a curved circular cylinder

The turbulent wake behind a curved circular cylinder is investigated based on data obtained from a direct numerical simulation. Here, emphasis is placed in the assessment of two approaches for simplified modelling: reduced-order modelling (ROM) and Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations. To this end, the instantaneous vortical structures, the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) of the flow, and relevant Reynolds stress components have been analysed. The results show that despite the complexity of the instantaneous vortical structures, the wake dynamics are governed by the quasi-periodic shedding of primary vortices. Between 24% and 50% of the kinetic energy in the POD is captured by the two most energetic modes, and about 200 modes are needed to capture 90% of the kinetic energy. These findings suggest that, as long as the large-scale structures of the von Kármán vortex shedding are concerned, the present case can be approached by ROM; but a detailed representation of the flow dynamics without an eddy viscosity model that accounts for the unresolved turbulent fluctuations would require a large amount of degrees of freedom. Concerning the Reynolds stresses, their magnitude varies considerably depending on the depth at which they have been sampled. This dependence is related to the strength of the vortex shedding, and the intensity of the secondary flows induced by the curvature of the cylinder. As a consequence of the combination of these two effects, the correlation between streamwise and vertical velocity fluctuations is highest in the wake behind the midspan of the curved cylinder, and the correlation between cross-flow and vertical velocity fluctuations reaches large values in the lower wake.