Investigation on the influence mechanism of wall-fluid interaction on flow around nanoscale circular cylinder

Abstract

The influence of atomic interaction strength between solid wall and fluid on the flow around a nanoscale circular cylinder was numerically probed with the molecular dynamics method. The results show that when the flow velocity is 2.2 and Reynolds number is 23, vortices are periodically formed behind the circular cylinder at the nanoscale, and go through the development and shedding. With the weakening of wall-fluid interaction between cylinder surface and fluid atoms, the vortex shedding period decreases, the Strouhal number increases, the weak wall-fluid interaction is beneficial for increasing vortex shedding frequency. It reveals that the length of time-averaged vortex behind the nanoscale cylinder decreases slightly with the decrease of wall-fluid interaction. Furthermore, the fluid density and velocity are symmetrically distributed along the central axis of nanoscale cylinder. As the wall-fluid interaction decreases, the binding force of cylinder surface to the fluid atoms decreases, which results in the decrease of the minimum value of fluid density in the upper right and lower right regions near the cylinder. And, the argon fluid is more prone to occur velocity slip on the cylinder surface, the corresponding velocity near the cylinder surface increases significantly.