Flow past a normal flat plate undergoing inline oscillations

Abstract

The flow past an inline oscillating normal flat plate has been considered with the view to explore the variety of wake phenomena which arise even at the low Reynolds number (Re) equal to 100 based on the free stream velocity and the width of the plate. The three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations were integrated in time over a wide range of excitation frequencies and amplitudes. A wake flow regime map was produced on the basis of the 24 computer simulations. For a certain excitation amplitude, the wake vortex shedding is first antisymmetric at low excitation frequencies fe. When fe is increased the wake first becomes chaotic and thereafter turns into a symmetric shedding mode, for instance the S-II mode with a binary vortex pair on each side of the wake. If fe is increased even further, more complex symmetric wake patterns may occur before the wake ultimately turns into chaos. Symmetric wakes are thus only observed in a band of intermediate excitation frequencies and then with the dominating flow frequency locked-on to fe. In one particular case, the S-II mode in the very near wake turned into what might be considered as a new S-IV mode which comprised four different vortex pairs per shedding cycle. In spite of the low Re considered, several cases exhibited distinct three-dimensionalities whereas some other cases remained strictly 2D. In some of the cases, at least, the transition from 2D to 3D wake flow was ascribed to a “mode competition.” Finally, for one of the two-dimensional cases the Reynolds number was first increased to 300 and then to 500 and a complex three-dimensional wake flow was observed. However, even at Re = 100, two-dimensional computer simulations are unable to reproduce the three-dimensional wake flow characteristics reported from the present study.