A CFD Study of Flow Past a Rotating Cylinder to Re = 1000

Abstract

In this paper, we examine, computationally, a uniform flow past a rotating circular cylinder. The objective is to determine the effect the rotation has on the lift and drag acting on the cylinder, on the vortex structures and on the vortex-shedding frequency. A streakline calculation illustrates the effect the rotation has on the vortex-structure in the wake. A combination of finite-difference and spectral methods is used to calculate the three-dimensional incompressible unsteady Navier-Stokes equations in primitive variable form in nonorthogonal curvilinear coordinates. A second-order accurate in time fractional-step method is used to decouple pressure and velocity components. High-order compact-difference schemes are used to avoid the problem of the so-called checker-board behavior. The calculated lift coefficient (CL), drag coefficient (CD) and pressure coefficient (CP) of the flows at a Reynolds number of 200 and α = 1 to 5 (α is the nondimensional ratio of the rotating speed-to-free stream speed) agreed very well with results in the literature. However, streak line patterns were not presented in these earlier studies. We also have drag and lift results at Re = 1000 for the same range of α values. These results are found to follow the same trends as at Re = 200. These results have a practical application in offshore drilling.