Numerical Experiments on the Flow Past a Circular Cylinder at Sub-Critical Reynolds Number,

Abstract

The performance of the dynamic subgrid-scale eddy-viscosity model and the suitability of high-order accurate, upwind-biased numerical methods for large eddy simulations of complex flows are investigated in the case of the turbulent wake behind a circular cylinder at Reynolds number 3,900, based on freestream velocity and cylinder diameter. The numerical method consists of high-order upwind-biased finite difference techniques applied to the compressible Navier-Stokes equations written in generalized coordinates. Integration in time is done using a fully implicit, second-order accurate iterative technique. The results of three fifth-order accurate simulations performed on identical grids with the least-squares version of the dynamic model, the fixed-coefficient Smagorinsky model, and with no subgrid-scale model are compared in the first 10 diameters of the wake. The impact of three-dimensionality is also examined via two and three-dimensional calculations without a subgrid-scale model. The effect of numerical dissipation is investigated by comparing two simulations using upwind-biased schemes, the first being fifth-order, and the second seventh-order accurate. It is found that the near-wake is highly three-dimensional at this Reynolds number. It contains pairs of counter-rotating streamwise vortices, the effect of which cannot be reproduced in two-dimensional calculations. Three-dimensional computations are essential for predicting flow statistics of engineering interest. (AN)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1994
Accession Number
ADA289937

Entities

People

  • Parviz Moin
  • Patrick Beaudan

Organizations

  • Stanford University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundary Layer
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Equations Of Motion
  • Flow Fields
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Measurement
  • Mechanical Properties
  • Navier Stokes Equations
  • Pressure Distribution
  • Pressure Gradients
  • Stratified Fluids
  • Three Dimensional
  • Turbulent Flow
  • Turbulent Mixing
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)
  • Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics.