Viscous shear flow past small bluff bodies attached to a plane wall

Abstract

Numerical solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations are presented for two-dimensional viscous flow past semicircular and semielliptical projections attached to a plane wall on which a laminar boundary layer has developed. Since the major axis is in the direction normal to the wall and is chosen to be twenty times as long as the minor axis in the present case, the flow around the semielliptical projection will approximately correspond to that around a normal flat plate. It is assumed that the height of each obstacle is so small in comparison with the local boundary-layer thickness that the approaching flow can be approximated by a uniform shear flow. Numerical solutions are obtained for the range 0·1-100 of the Reynolds number, which is defined in terms of the undisturbed approaching velocity at the top of the obstacle and its height. The geometrical shapes of the front and rear standing vortices, the drag coefficients and the pressure and shear-stress distributions are presented as functions of the Reynolds number. The computed results are discussed in connexion with the data already obtained in the other theoretical solutions and an experimental observation.