Steady forces on a cylinder with oblique vortex shedding

Abstract

We present a curious situation of a fluid-flow wherein the body experiences non-fluctuating fluid-flow force despite being associated with an unsteady flow comprising of sustained vortex shedding. The flow past a circular cylinder at Re=100 is investigated. It is shown that the spatio-temporal periodicity of the oblique vortex shedding results in constant-in-time force experienced by a cylinder placed in uniform flow. On the contrary, parallel vortex shedding leads to fluid force that fluctuates with time. It is found that, both, the parallel and oblique shedding are linearly unstable eigenmodes of the Re=100 steady flow past a cylinder.