Three-dimensional flow past a circular cylinder in proximity to a stationary wall

Abstract

In this paper, we present direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the three-dimensional flow around a circular cylinder near a stationary wall at the Reynolds number of 500. The gap (G) between the cylinder surface and the stationary wall varies in the range of 0–3.0D where D is the cylinder diameter. We observe that the proximity wall significantly affects the flow topology around the cylinder, which is characterized by the asymmetric wake, upward gap flow, and strong interactions of the cylinder vortices with the wall-generated boundary layer. Three flow regimes are identified with variations of the fluid forces and vortex dynamics. (i) Steady regime: at G/D < 0.3, vortex shedding is suppressed in the near wake, and scattered streamwise vortices form in the far wake where the upper side shear layer meets the stationary wall. No fluctuating forces act on the cylinder. (ii) Biased unsteady regime: at 0.3 ≤ G/D < 1.5, the gap flow deflects upward and the vortices shed from the gap side are significantly suppressed. The cylinder has enlarged fluctuating drag and lift forces with identical dominant frequencies. (iii) Parallel unsteady regime: at G/D ≥ 1.5, vortices shed from both sides of the cylinder are of almost identical intensities while the gap flow is approximately parallel to the wall. The vortex dynamics approaches that of an isolated circular cylinder in unconfined flows. Flow features of each regime are illuminated through the flow fields, vorticity contours, statistics of the enstrophies and gap flow, and pressure distribution on the cylinder surface. Finally, we investigate the critical gap ratio for the onset of the vortex-shedding of the upper shear layer and discuss the underlying physics. Moreover, we observe that the occurrence of the second harmonic lift and fundamental drag frequencies are resulted from the asymmetric wake because of the proximity of the stationary wall.