Shear-induced viscosity stratified flow past a pair of heated side-by-side square cylinders in a confined domain

Abstract

In this article, investigations have been carried out to decipher the effect of thermal buoyancy in a viscosity stratified flow field for a shear-thinning fluid flowing past a pair of heated side-by-side square cylinders, which is an extension part of our recent study [Sanyal, A. and Dhiman, A., “Wake interactions in a fluid flow past a pair of side-by-side square cylinders in presence of mixed convection,” Phys. Fluids 29, 103602 (2017)]. It is found that the leading-edge flow-separations from the square cylinders influence the near-wake structures and vortex shedding patterns in the presence of shear-thinning effects, which is otherwise missing for Newtonian fluid flow at Reynolds number Re = 40 and Richardson number Ri = 1. The distribution of wall-viscosity η along the inner surfaces of the side-by-side square cylinders, at different values of transverse spacings s/d and flow-behavior indices n, hints at large dependency on the inflections in the velocity profile within the gap-flow region. Under thermal buoyancy-driven mild shear-thinning flow conditions (n = 0.6 and 0.8), the gap-flow characteristics have been classified into “pressure-driven” and “momentum-driven” flow regimes, which provides a good explanation for the aberrations noted in the distribution pattern of η. The root-mean-square fluctuations of the velocity-magnitude and vortex shedding phenomenon are found to reciprocate a consistent flow physics associated with a shear-thinning flow at near and far-field downstream. The single body deflected type flow is primarily seen under predominant shear-thinning flow conditions (n = 0.4), compared to chaotic or quasi-periodic flow under mild shear-thinning conditions. Besides, the evolution of non-linear dynamics-based flow regimes (classified with respect to s/d using power spectrum density analysis) at different values of n and s/d is thoroughly summarized. The time-variant fluctuations of lift and drag force parameters are also found to be unified through cause and effects.