The influence of confinement on the drag force $F$ on a static cylinder in a viscous flow inside a rectangular slit of aperture $h_0$ has been investigated from experimental measurements and numerical simulations. At low enough Reynolds numbers, $F$ varies linearly with the mean velocity and the viscosity, allowing for the precise determination of drag coefficients $λ_{||}$ and $λ_{\bot}$ corresponding respectively to a mean flow parallel and perpendicular to the cylinder length $L$. In the parallel configuration, the variation of $λ_{||}$ with the normalized diameter $β= d/h_0$ of the cylinder is close to that for a 2D flow invariant in the direction of the cylinder axis and does not diverge when $β= 1$. The variation of $λ_{||}$ with the distance from the midplane of the model reflects the parabolic Poiseuille profile between the plates for $β\ll 1$ while it remains almost constant for $β\sim 1$. In the perpendicular configuration, the value of $λ_{\bot}$ is close to that corresponding to a 2D system only if $β\ll 1$ and/or if the clearance between the ends of the cylinder and the side walls is very small: in that latter case, $λ_{\bot}$ diverges as $β\to 1$ due to the blockage of the flow. In other cases, the side flow between the ends of the cylinder and the side walls plays an important part to reduce $λ_{\bot}$: a full 3D description of the flow is needed to account for these effects.
Flow over bluff bodies has multiple engineering applications and thus, has been studied for decades. The lift and drag coefficients are practically important in the design of many components such as automobiles, aircrafts, buildings etc. These coefficients vary significantly with Reynolds number and geometric parameters of the bluff body. In this study, we have analyzed the sensitivity of lift and drag coefficients on single and tandem elliptic cylinders to cylinder aspect ratios, angles of attack, cylinder separation, and flow Reynolds number. Sensitivity analysis with Monte-Carlo algorithm r…
Results are reported of an experimental investigation into the motion of a heavy cylinder free to move inside a water-filled drum rotating around a horizontal axis. The cylinder is observed to either co- or, counter intuitively, counter-rotate with respect to the rotating drum. The flow was measured with particle image velocimetry (PIV), and it was found that the inner cylinder significantly altered the bulk flow field from the solid-body rotation found for a fluid filled drum. In the counter-rotation case, the generated lift force allowed the cylinder to freely rotate without contact with the…
In this study we experimentally investigate bubbly drag reduction in a highly turbulent flow of water with dispersed air at $5.0 \times 10^{5} \leq \text{Re} \leq 1.7 \times 10^{6}$ over a non-wetting surface containing micro-scale roughness. To do so, the Taylor-Couette geometry is used, allowing for both accurate global drag and local flow measurements. The inner cylinder - coated with a rough, hydrophobic material - is rotating, whereas the smooth outer cylinder is kept stationary. The crucial control parameter is the air volume fraction $α$ present in the working fluid. For small volume fr…
We experimentally study the influence of wall roughness on bubble drag reduction in turbulent Taylor-Couette flow, i.e.\ the flow between two concentric, independently rotating cylinders. We measure the drag in the system for the cases with and without air, and add roughness by installing transverse ribs on either one or both of the cylinders. For the smooth wall case (no ribs) and the case of ribs on the inner cylinder only, we observe strong drag reduction up to $DR=33\%$ and $DR=23\%$, respectively, for a void fraction of $α=6\%$. However, with ribs mounted on both cylinders or on the outer…
Air cavities, i.e. air layers developed behind cavitators, are seen as a promising drag reducing method in the maritime industry. Here we utilize the Taylor-Couette (TC) geometry, i.e. the flow between two concentric, independently rotating cylinders, to study the effect of air cavities in this closed setup, which is well-accessible for drag measurements and optical flow visualizations. We show that stable air cavities can be formed, and that the cavity size increases with Reynolds number and void fraction. The streamwise cavity length strongly depends on the axial position due to buoyancy for…
Models of cylinders in the oscillatory flow can be found virtually everywhere in the marine industry, such as pump towers experiencing sloshing load in a LNG ship liquid tank. However, compared to the problem of a cylinder in the uniform flow, a cylinder in the oscillatory flow is less studied, let alone multiple cylinders. Therefore, we experimentally and numerically studied two identical circular cylinders oscillating in the still water with either a side-by-side or a tandem configuration for a wide range of Keulegan-Carpenter number and Stokes number $β$. The experiment result shows that th…
Deep reinforcement learning-based active flow control of an elliptical cylinder: transitioning from an elliptical cylinder to a circular cylinder and a flat plate
A numerical study of two-dimensional flow past a confined circular cylinder with slip wall is performed. A dimensionless number, Knudsen number ($Kn$) is used to describe the slip length of cylinder wall. The Reynolds number ($Re$) and Knudsen number ($Kn$) ranges considered are $Re = [1, 180]$ and $Kn = [0, \infty)$, respectively. Time-averaged flow separation angle ($\bar{θ_s}$), dimensionless recirculation length ($\bar{L_s}$) and the tangential velocity ($\bar{u_τ}$) distributed on the cylinder's wall, drag coefficient ($\bar{C_d}$) and drag reduction ($DR$) are investigated. The time-aver…
The vorticity confinement (VC) method was used with total variation diminishing (TVD) schemes to reduce possible over-confinement and applied to tip vortices shed by edges of wings in order to predict induced drag using far-field integration. The optimal VC parameter was determined first by application to 2-D vortices and then to tip vortices shed by a 3-D wing. The 3-D inviscid simulations were post-processed using the wake-integral technique to determine lift-induced drag force. Dependence of the VC parameter on the flight Mach number and the angle of attack was evaluated. Grid convergence s…
The flow phenomena around a rotating elliptic cylinder in a channel is studied numerically. The value of the confinement parameter βis varied as \frac{1}{k}, where k = 2, 4, 6, and 8 respectively, to demonstrate the vortex-shedding patterns around the cylinder in the downstream wake. The non-dimensional rotation rate αtakes up 0.5, 1, and 2 as its value. Additionally, the Reynolds number (\textit{Re}) based on the cylinder diameter is taken to be 50, 100, and 150 respectively. A parametric study is performed to explain the changes in drag coefficient \textit{(C_{D})}, lift coefficient \textit{…
The different types of instabilities of free cylinders (diameter $D$, length $L$) have been studied in a viscous flow (velocity $U$) between parallel vertical walls of horizontal width $W$ at a distance $H$: the influence of the confinement parameters $D/H$ and $L/W$ has been investigated. As $D/H$ increases, there is a transition from stable flow to oscillations transverse to the walls and then to a fluttering motion with oscillations of the angle of the axis with respect to the horizontal. The two types of oscillations may be superimposed in the transition domain. The frequency $f$ of the tr…
The phenomenon of drag reduction induced by injection of bubbles into a turbulent carrier fluid has been known for a long time; the governing control parameters and underlying physics is however not well understood. In this paper, we use three dimensional numerical simulations to uncover the effect of deformability of bubbles injected in a turbulent Taylor-Couette flow on the overall drag experienced by the system. We consider two different Reynolds numbers for the carrier flow, i.e. $Re_i=5\times 10^3$ and $Re_i=2\times 10^4$; the deformability of the bubbles is controlled through the Weber n…
In the present study, numerical investigations were performed with optimisation to determine efficient non-uniform suction profiles to control the flow around a circular cylinder in the range of Reynolds numbers 4<Re<188.5. Several objectives were explored, namely the minimisation of: the separation angle, total drag, and the pressure drag. This was in an effort to determine the relationships between the characteristics of the uncontrolled flow and the parameters of optimised suction control. A variety of non-uniform suction configurations were implemented and compared to the benchmark perform…
A new turbulent Taylor-Couette system consisting of two independently rotating cylinders has been constructed. The gap between the cylinders has a height of 0.927 m, an inner radius of 0.200 m, and a variable outer radius (from 0.279 to 0.220 m). The maximum angular rotation rates of the inner and outer cylinder are 20 and 10 Hz, respectively, resulting in Reynolds numbers up to 3.4 x 10^6 with water as working fluid. With this Taylor-Couette system, the parameter space (Re_i, Re_o, η) extends to (2.0 x 10^6, {\pm}1.4 x 10^6, 0.716-0.909). The system is equipped with bubble injectors, temperat…
Materials with periodic architectures exhibit many beneficial characteristics such as high specific stiffness thanks to the material placement along the stress paths and the nano-scale strength amplification achieved through the use of hierarchical architectures. Recently, the porosity of architectured materials was leveraged to increase the efficiency of compact heat exchangers, and their internal aerodynamics was studied. However, their performance on external aerodynamics applications is generally assumed to be detrimental. Here, we demonstrate that exposing 3D lattice material to the exter…
The classical problem of suppressing vortex shedding in the wake of a circular cylinder by using body rotation is revisited in an adjoint-based optimal control framework. The cylinder's unsteady and fully unconstrained rotation rate is optimized at Reynolds numbers between 75 and 200 and over horizons that are longer than in previous studies, where they are typically of the order of a vortex shedding period or shorter. In the best configuration, the drag is reduced by 19%, the vortex shedding is effectively suppressed, and this low drag state is maintained with minimal cylinder rotation after …
Plane Poiseuille flow past a nanoscale cylinder that is arbitrarily confined (i.e., symmetrically or asymmetrically confined) in a slit channel is studied via hydrodynamic lubrication theory and molecular dynamics simulations, considering cases where the cylinder remains static or undergoes thermal motion. Lubrication theory predictions for the drag force and volumetric flow rate are in close agreement with molecular dynamics simulations of flows having molecularly thin lubrication gaps, despite the presence of significant structural forces induced by the crystalline structure of the modeled s…
In heat transfer augmenting methods such as radial fins, the heat transfer enhancement commonly leads to the drag force increment. In the present paper, slots are inserted over the fins to simultaneously reduce the drag coefficient. Turbulent convection heat transfer around a cylinder, as well as oscillating bundle of tubes including the slotted radial fins have been investigated. The governing equations are solved in two-dimension utilizing OpenFOAM software based on k-ω SST closure model. The cases with various slot location, slot width, the number of the slots, the fin height, and oscillati…
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms are rapidly making inroads into fluid mechanics, following the remarkable achievements of these techniques in a wide range of science and engineering applications. In this paper, a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agent has been employed to train an artificial neural network (ANN) using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) data to perform active flow control (AFC) around a 2-D circular cylinder. Flow control strategies are investigated at a diameter-based Reynolds number Re_D = 100 using advantage actor-critic (A2C) algorithm by means of two symmetri…
Tall buildings are often subjected to steady and unsteady forces due to external wind flows. Measurement and mitigation of these forces becomes critical to structural design in engineering applications. Over the last few decades, many approaches such as modification of the external geometry of structures have been investigated to mitigate wind-induced load. One such proven geometric modification involved rounding of sharp corners. In this work, we systematically analyze the effects of rounded corner radii on the flow-induced loading for a square cylinder. We perform 3-Dimensional (3D) simulati…
A rigid object of general shape is fixed inside a wind tunnel. The drag force exerted on it by the wind is determined by a new method based on simple basic Physics concepts, provided one has a solver, any solver, for the corresponding dynamic Navier-Stokes equation which determines the wind velocity field around the object. The method is completely general, but here we apply it to the traditional problem of a long cylinder perpendicular to the wind.
We study numerically the two-dimensional flow past a circular cylinder as a prototypical transitional flow, and investigate the influence of a generic slip boundary condition on the wake dynamics. We show that slip significantly delays the onset of recirculation and shedding in the wake behind the cylinder. As expected, the drag on the cylinder decreases with slip, with an increased drag sensitivity for large Reynolds numbers. We also show that past the critical shedding Reynolds number, slip decreases the vorticity intensity in the wake, as well as the lift forces on the cylinder, but increas…
The combined effect of fluid elasticity and yield-stress on the flow past a circular cylinder is studied by two-dimensional direct numerical simulation. We analyze the effects of yield-stress, elasticity, shear-thinning, and shear-thickening on the wake characteristics using the Saramito constitutive model. The elastoviscoplastic (EVP) wake flow is studied at a moderate Reynolds number (Re = 100) where two-dimensional vortex shedding occurs in the Newtonian case. We find that in the shear-thinning elastoviscoplastic flow, when yield stress increases, the drag coefficient and root mean square o…
This paper analyzes the adjoint solution of the Navier-Stokes equation. We focus on flow across a circular cylinder at three Reynolds numbers, Re_D=20, 100 and 500. The quantity of interest in the adjoint formulation is the drag on the cylinder. We use classical fluid mechanics approaches to analyze the adjoint solution, which is a vector field similar to a flow field. Production and dissipation of kinetic energy of the adjoint field is discussed. We also derive the evolution of circulation of the adjoint field along a closed material contour. These analytical results are used to explain three…
A numerical study of the problem of laminar infinite flow of viscous incompressible fluid around a rotating circular cylinder at Reynolds number $ 50 \le {\rm Re} \le 500 $ and dimensionless rotation rate $ 0 \le α\le 7 $ has been carried out. The parametric map of flow regimes has been constructed, where two zones of steady and two zones of periodic solutions are signed out. The dependencies of the drag and lift coefficients on the rotation rate for $ {\rm Re} = 200 $ are studied in detail. Convergence of the numerical solution to the known asymptotic solution at large $ α$ is confirmed.
Internal phoretic flows due to the interactions of solid boundaries with local chemical gradients may be created using chemical patterning. Alternatively, we demonstrate here that internal flows might also be induced by geometric asymmetries of chemically-homogeneous surfaces. We characterise the circulatory flow created in a cavity enclosed between two eccentric cylindrical walls of uniform chemical activity. Local gradients of the diffusing solute induce a slip flow along the surface of the cylinders, leading to a circulatory bulk flow pattern which can be solved analytically in the diffusiv…
We investigate the dynamics of flows past a stationary circular cylinder embedded on spherical and cylindrical surfaces at a fixed Reynolds number of 100. For flows on surfaces, it is convenient to express the Navier-Stokes equations in exterior calculus notation. We employ the discrete exterior calculus (DEC) method (Mohamed et al. (2016)) to numerically solve the equations. We explore the role played by curvature on dynamical quantities of interest: the drag coefficient (Cd), the lift coefficient (Cl), and the Strouhal number (St). Our simulations indicate that the effect of surface curvatur…
The performances of an original passive control system based on a biomimetic approach are assessed by investigating the flow over a bluff-body. This control device consists in a couple of flaps made from the combination of a rigid plastic skeleton coated with a porous fabric mimicking the shaft and the vane of the bird's feathers, respectively. The sides of a square cylinder have been fitted with this system so as to enable the flaps to freely rotate around their leading edge. This feature allows the movable flaps to self-adapt to the flow conditions. Comparing both the uncontrolled and the co…
Turbulent flow across an in-line array of tube-banks with transverse and longitudinal pitch PT /D = 2.67, and PL /D = 2.31, has been simulated successfully by Large Eddy Simulation (LES) based on the dynamic Smagorinsky subgrid scale model (SGS), in which a wall-layer model is used to reduce the computational cost. The flow structures across the tube-banks were examined through the normalized Q criterion. The surface pressure characteristics from the middle cylinder within each column of cylinders are found to agree well with the existing experimental data, as did also the values of drag and l…
Vortex-induced vibration (VIV) exists widely in natural and industrial fields. The main approaches for solving VIV problems are numerical simulations and experimental methods. However, experiment methods are difficult to obtain the whole flow field information and also high-cost while numerical simulation is extraordinary time-consuming and limited in low Reynolds number and simple geometric configuration. In addition, numerical simulations are difficult to handle the moving mesh technique. In this paper, physics informed neural network (PINN) is proposed to solve the VIV and wake-induced vibr…
We present in this Letter experimental results on the bidimensional flow field around a cylinder penetrating into dense granular matter together with drag force measurements. A hydrodynamic model based on extended kinetic theory for dense granular flow reproduces well the flow localization close to the cylinder and the corresponding scalings of the drag force, which is found to not depend on velocity, but linearly on the pressure and on the cylinder diameter and weakly on the grain size. Such a regime is found to be valid at a low enough "granular" Reynolds number.
The present study investigates unsteady wake dynamics in flow past oscillating cylinder. Two-dimensional computational study is carried out for flow past sinusoidally oscillating cylinder. Operating parameters like Reynolds number, forcing frequency, amplitude and wavelength are systematically varied and their effect on wake dynamics is investigated. Lift and drag coefficients are plotted with cylinder position to characterize the flow. Further, flow field is investigated using Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD). Time-resolved vorticity contours are obtained. These results are then processe…
Deep artificial neural networks (ANNs) used together with deep reinforcement learning (DRL) are receiving growing attention due to their capabilities to control complex problems. This technique has been recently used to solve problems related to flow control. In this work, an ANN trained through a DRL agent is used to perform active flow control. Two-dimensional simulations of the flow around a cylinder are conducted and an active control based on two jets located on the walls of the cylinder is considered. By gathering information from the flow surrounding the cylinder, the ANN agent is able …
An integral quantity is presented that relates the wake of a body in nominally two-dimensional flow to its drag, for Reynolds numbers ranging from 9,000 to 144,000. It is defined as the ratio of the kinetic energy to the vorticity in the fluid boundary and, for the special case of laminar flow, is proportional to the angular momentum in the wake bubble. The new quantity is useful for correlating drag data for circular and rectangular cylinders, wedges, v-gutters, and normal flat plates with and without splitter plates. The correlation indicates that the drag force is proportional to the flow s…
We create a highly controlled lab environment-accessible to both global and local monitoring-to analyse turbulent boiling flows and in particular their shear stress in a statistically stationary state. Namely, by precisely monitoring the drag of strongly turbulent Taylor-Couette flow (the flow in between two co-axially rotating cylinders, Reynolds number $\textrm{Re}\approx 10^6$) during its transition from non-boiling to boiling, we show that the intuitive expectation, namely that a few volume percent of vapor bubbles would correspondingly change the global drag by a few percent, is wrong. Ra…
The flow-induced deformation of a thin, elastic splitter plate attached to the rear of a circular cylinder and subjected to laminar pulsatile inflow is investigated. The cylinder and elastic splitter plate are contained within a narrow channel and the Reynolds number is mostly restricted to Re = 100, primarily covering the two-dimensional flow regime. An in-house fluid-structure interaction code is employed for simulations, which couples a sharp-interface immersed boundary method for the fluid dynamics with a finite-element method to treat the structural dynamics. The structural solver is impl…
This paper proposes an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian incompressible finite volume scheme based on Consistent Flux Reconstruction method (ALE-CFR) on deforming two-dimensional unstructured triangular grids. The scheme is further applied to solve for a problem of two-dimensional incompressible viscous flow past a rotationally oscillating circular cylinder when subjected to forced transverse oscillations at Re = 100. The paper first focuses on the mathematical development and validation of the ALE-CFR scheme and then its application on the problem. The rotational oscillation frequencies were take…
The wake of a circular cylinder performing rotary oscillations is studied using hydrodynamic tunnel experiments at $Re=100$. Two-dimensional particle image velocimetry on the mid-plane perpendicular to the axis of cylinder is used to characterize the spatial development of the flow and its stability properties. The lock-in phenomenon that determines the boundaries between regions of the forcing parameter space were the wake is globally unstable or convectively unstable is scrutinized using the experimental data. A novel method based on the analysis of power density spectra of the flow allows u…
