Flow Past Square Cylinders of Different Size With and Without Corner Modification

Abstract

In many mechanical engineering applications, separated flows often appear around any object such as tall buildings, monuments, and towers are permanently exposed to wind. Similarly, piers, bridge pillars, and legs of offshore platforms are continuously subjected to the load produced by maritime or fluvial streams. These bodies usually create a large region of separated flow and a massive unsteady wake region in the downstream. The highly asymmetric and periodic nature of flow in the downstream has attracted the attention of physicists, engineers and CFD practitioners. A lot of research work is carried out for a square cylinder but flow past square cylinders with and without corner modification work is not taken up. This motivated to take up the task of flow past two different sized square cylinders, numerically simulated. A Reynolds number of 100 and 200 is considered for the investigation. The flow is assumed to be two dimensional unsteady and incompressible. The computational methodology is carried out once the problem is defined the first step in solving the problem is to construct a geometry on which the simulation is planned. Once the geometry is constructed, proper assignment of its boundaries in accordance to the actual physical state is to be done. The various boundary options that are to be set. After setting the boundary types, the continuum type is set. The geometry is discretized into small control volumes. Once the surface mesh is completed, the mesh details are exported to a mesh file, then exported to Fluent, which is CFD solver usually run in background mode. This helps to prioritize the execution of the run. The run would continue until the required convergence criterion is reached or till the maximum number of iterations is completed. Results indicate, in case of chamfered and rounded corners in square cylinder, there is decrease in the wake width and thereby the lift and drag coefficient values. The form drag is reduced because of a higher average pressure downstream when separation is delayed by corner modification. The lift coefficients of Square cylinder with corner modification decreases but Strouhal number increases when compared with a square cylinder without corner modification. Strouhal number remains same even if magnitude of oscillations is increased while monitoring the velocity behind the cylinder. Frequency of vortex shedding decreases with the introduction of second cylinder either in the upstream or downstream of the first cylinder. As the centre distance between two cylinders i.e., pitch-to-perimeter ratio is increased to 6,the behavior of the flow almost approaches to that of flow past a square cylinder of with and without modification of same condition. When the perimeter of the upstream cylinder with and without modification is larger than the downstream cylinder, the size of the eddies is always bigger in between the cylinders compared to the downstream of the second cylinder. The flow velocity in between the cylinders with and without corner modification are less compared to the downstream of the second cylinder. As the distance increases, the flow velocity in between the cylinders become almost equal to the downstream of the second cylinder. The results are presented in the form of streamlines, flow velocity, pressure distribution. drag coefficient, lift coefficient and Strouhal number.