Chapter 5 Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

The ow around a circular cylinder is a very good test case for the discretisation described in Chapter 3. The geometry is complex on a Cartesian grid. Results of the simulations can be compared well to results of other methods and experiments. Since curvilinear grids are an ecient method for computing ow around circular cylinders, many simulations have been done. Three dierent Reynolds numbers will be discussed here: Re = 40, in which case the ow is laminar and has steady separation, Re = 100, in which case the ow is still laminar and two-dimensional, but a periodic laminar wake is formed, and nally Re = 3900. In the latter case, the ow starts getting turbulent in the shear layers (and will be three-dimensional as a consequence). Various quantities will be used for comparing the results. The following dimensionless numbers are used: drag (CD ) and lift (CL ). Both numbers are built up from a pressure term (CD,p and CL,p ) and a viscous (friction) term (CD,f and CL,f ). These forces are made dimensionless by Fd , CD = 1 /2 U 2 A where Fd is the drag force (the way it is computed is described below), the density, U the characteristic velocity, and A the area of the object as the incoming ow sees is; the Strouhal number (the dimensionless shedding frequency), dened by St = fr L , U

where fr is the shedding frequency (which can be determined from the graph of any ow velocity behind the cylinder), L and U the characteristic length and velocity, respectively; the angle of separation (sep ) (described below). These quantities are all obtained from the ow averaged in time and the spanwise direction.

80

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

Furthermore, two results are presented as function of the angle around the cylinder: the pressure distribution at the cylinder, given by p Cp = 1 , /2 U 2 as well as the skin friction at the cylinder:
1

(u t) n

/2 D . U

Especially the Cp prole gives a good indication of the mean ow. From the skin friction graph the separation angle is determined as the rst root seen from the front of the cylinder. The way in which the forces are computed needs some explanation, since they are to be computed on surfaces skewed to the grid. To nd the viscous forces in the x- and y -direction, the forces in the normal and tangential direction are considered rst. To distinguish between the velocity vector and velocity components, the following notation (in 2D) is used: u = (u, v )T and the velocity in normal and tangential direction are denoted by un and ut respectively. Then in (n, t) coordinates nn = 2 nt Using the denitions t= tx ty = ny nx , where n = nx ny , dun = 2(u n) n; dn du t = (u t) n. = dn

and the analytical identities u = u n = n v = v n = n this can be written as nn = 2(unx + vny ) n = 2nx ( and u u v v u v nx + ny ) + 2ny ( nx + ny ) = 2nx + 2ny x y x y n n u u nx + ny ; x y v v nx + ny , x y

u v + nx . n n Here the derivatives of the normal do not occur, since the velocity vanishes at the surface (no-slip condition). If the normal points towards the uid, the x- and y -component of the viscous force are constructed as nt = (utx + vty ) n = ny nx nn + tx nt = nx nn ny nt

5.1 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=40 and ny nn + ty nt = ny nn + nx nt , respectively. The skin friction is the normal derivative of the tangential velocity, so equal to (u t) n = nt .

81

5.1

Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=40

The ow around a circular cylinder at Re = 40 is computed to study the inuence of several parameters. For this Reynolds number, the ow converges to a steady state which makes it easy to compare results with (reliable) experiments and other simulations. Because of the symmetry, only half of the geometry is needed, the other half is obtained by mirroring. Since computing the ow is not computationally expensive at this Reynolds number many simulations can be done.

5.1.1

Grid study

The computational domain is drawn in Figure 5.1. Note that the x- and y -axes are interchanged with respect to the usual situation. The boundary conditions for the velocity are: u = (u, v )T = (0, U )T at the inow (without loss of generality U = 1 can be taken), at the outow boundaries Dirichlet conditions are given for both u and v , and at the symmetry plane u = 0 and dv/dx = 0. The steady state solution is computed by initialising the ow eld with zeros for the velocity and pressure. The steady state is obtained at t = 2.
outlet inlet U cylinder symmetry -x 10D y D 20D outlet 10D

Figure 5.1: The computational domain for computing the ow around a circular cylinder at Re = 40 (cylinder is not drawn to scale!). The domain size, number of grid cells, and the stretching of the grid are varied. This is summarised in Table 5.1. In the table, the time step is shown that was used to converge to the steady state. The time step was chosen such that the method was just stable. Together with the number

82 Simulation A exact B standard C smaller domain D larger domain E mild stretching F strong stretching G severe stretching H coarser grid I ner grid J coarse grid, strong stretching

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder Ncells 160400 80200 40100 160400 80200 80200 80200 40100 160400 2050 ND 28 20 20 20 10 40 80 10 40 20 domain [20, 0][20, 40] [10, 0][10, 20] [5, 0][5, 10] [20, 0][20, 40] [10, 0][10, 20] [10, 0][10, 20] [10, 0][10, 20] [10, 0][10, 20] [10, 0][10, 20] [10, 0][10, 20] t 1000 10.0 20.0 20.0 20.0 50.0 5.0 0.25 20.0 5.0 10.0

Table 5.1: A summary of numerical parameters for simulation A-J (ND represents the number of cells on the symmetry line lying within the cylinder). of grid cells, the time step indicates how much time was needed to compute the steady state solution. The Cp graphs of simulations B-I (see Table 5.1) are presented in Figure 5.2. Looking at the standard case (B) the good agreement with case A (reference) may be noted. However, some dierences exist and the cause for this gets clear from the results of C and D (smaller and larger domain, respectively): with a smaller domain, the error grows larger and for a large computational domain the error vanishes. Case E (mild stretching) contains only a few cells at the cylinder boundary and non-smooth behaviour of the Cp graph is noted. Strong stretching hardly has an inuence on the solution (F), but when really exaggerating (G) (in the streamwise direction 40% of the cells are within the cylinder!) the solution gets worse. The results from H and I (coarser and ner grid, respectively) together with B (standard case) show the eect of grid renement. Next, the skin friction is compared in Figure 5.3.

5.1 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=40

83

45

90

135

180

45

90

135

180

B: standard
1 1

C: smaller domain

45

90

135

180

45

90

135

180

D: larger domain
1 1

E: mild stretching

45

90

135

180

45

90

135

180

F: strong stretching
1 1

G: severe stretching

45

90

135

180

45

90

135

180

H: coarser grid

I: ner grid

Figure 5.2: The Cp of the simulations B-I (line) compared with the reference simulation A (dotted).

84

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

0 0 45 90 135 180

0 0 45 90 135 180

B: standard
6 6

C: smaller domain

0 0 45 90 135 180

0 0 45 90 135 180

D: larger domain
6 6

E: mild stretching

0 0 45 90 135 180

0 0 45 90 135 180

F: strong stretching
6 6

G: severe stretching

0 0 45 90 135 180

0 0 45 90 135 180

H: coarser grid

I: ner grid

Figure 5.3: The skin friction of simulations B-I (line) compared with the reference simulation A (dotted).

5.1 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=40

85

The standard case (B) nicely matches the reference solution, but has a few wiggles on the top. The skin friction of case C and D (smaller and larger domain, respectively) shows the same behaviour as they did for the Cp graph. Case E (mild stretching), with only a few cells on the cylinder surface, has a too small skin friction (although the pressure around the cylinder was quite good). Cases F and G (strong and severe stretching, respectively) both have a little too much friction at the front of the cylinder, and especially case G has quite some wiggles. Finally, case H and I (coarser and ner grid, respectively) have too little and too much friction, respectively. The wiggles in the skin friction will come back at higher Reynolds numbers. When the size of the wiggles in Figure 5.3 are compared to each other, it is noticed that they are acceptable for simulations with a sensibly chosen grid. Skin friction on grids that contain severe stretching towards the cylinder centre shows large wiggles; fortunately, these grids do not make much sense as will be explained in Section 5.3. The results for simulation J (coarse grid, strong stretching) are presented separately in Figure 5.4. The grid for this simulation was constructed in another manner. A uniform grid was constructed in the rectangle [0.5, 0] [0.5, 0.5] (the rectangle circumscribing the cylinder) and outside this rectangle the grid is coarsened by severe stretching (factor 1.7) to use as few cells as possible. Doing so, the grid contains 16 times fewer cells than case B (standard case). This may seem not so important at this Reynolds number. However, it will appear to be important for higher Reynolds numbers, because a very ne grid is required near the cylinder to resolve the thin boundary layer. As a result a large number of cells is located at the cylinder surface, which covers only a very small part of the whole computational domain. Therefore, it is necessary to use strong stretching away from the cylinder. In Section 5.3, the dierence between this case and a grid with few cells and strong stretching is explained. Obviously, simulation J behaves just like

4 0 2

0 45 90 135 180 0 45 90 135 180

Figure 5.4: The Cp graphs and skin friction graphs for simulation J (line) compared with the reference simulation A (dotted).

simulation B. The skin friction is a little less smooth around 90 , but here the cells are coarser than in case B where the grid is stretched away from the origin. The skin friction has only small wiggles. The results of the Cp graph and skin-friction are summarized in Table 5.2.

86

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder Simulation A exact B standard C smaller domain D larger domain E mild stretching F strong stretching G severe stretching H coarser grid I ner grid J coarse grid, strong stretching CD,p 1.02 1.06 1.18 1.02 1.07 1.06 1.05 1.07 1.06 1.06 CD,f 0.56 0.57 0.64 0.56 0.58 0.57 0.58 0.58 0.57 0.57 CD sep 1.58 126.67 1.63 127.30 1.81 125.69 1.58 127.42 1.65 130.12 1.63 126.40 1.63 126.44 1.64 129.78 1.63 126.59 1.62 125.55

Table 5.2: The pressure drag, viscous drag, total drag and angle of separation for simulation A-J for ow around a circular cylinder at Re = 40.

5.1.2

Comparison with experiments

Next, the numerical results are compared with experimental data. Experiments at this Reynolds number (Re = 40) were done by Thom (1933), Grove et al. (1964), and Coutanceau et al. (1977), see [44, 16, 8]. In Figure 5.5 the Cp graph is shown for the best simulation (A) and the available experimental results. In Table 5.3, the drag, the

45

90

135

180

Figure 5.5: A comparison of Cp (line: simulation A, : Grove, : old experimental data from Thom). separation angle, and the length of the wake are compared to experimental data.

5.1.3

Comparison with simulations

In this section, results are compared to those of other simulations. Simulations of the ow around a circular cylinder at Re = 40 were done by Tritton (1959) [45], Son (1969) et al. [40], Dennis et al. (1970) [9], Fornberg (1980) [12], Borthwick (1986) [3], Henderson

5.1 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=40 CD,p 1.02 0.49 CD,f 0.56 CD sep L 1.58 126.67 2.22 1.59 137.2 126.5 1.54 2.13

87

Simulation A Thom [44] Tritton (1959) [45] Grove et al. [16] 0.92 Coutanceau et al. [8]

Table 5.3: Comparison of the drag, separation angle, and length of the wake with available experimental data. (1995) [18], Kravchenko et al. (1999) [25], and Kirkpatrick et al. (2003) [20]. The pressure and skin friction can be found in Figure 5.6 and results for the drag, angle of separation, and the length of the recirculation area are presented in Table 5.4.

88

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

4 0 2

0 45 90 135 180 0 45 90 135 180

Son et al. (1969)

1 6

4 0 2

0 45 90 135 180 0 45 90 135 180

Dennis et al. (1970)

1 6

4 0 2

0 45 90 135 180 0 45 90 135 180

Fornberg (1980)
1 6

4 0 2

0 45 90 135 180 0 45 90 135 180

Kirkpatrick et al. (2002)

Figure 5.6: Comparison of the pressure (left) and skin friction (right) of simulation A (line) and other simulations (dotted).

5.1 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=40 CD,p 1.02 CD 1.58 1.56 0.998 0.524 1.52 1.498 1.507 1.01 0.53 1.54 1.01 0.51 1.52 1.535 CD,f 0.56 sep L 126.67 2.22 126.1 126.2 125.0 2.24 126.3

89

Simulation A Son et al. [40] Dennis et al. [9] Fornberg [12] Borthwick [3] Henderson [18] Kravchenko et al. [25] Kirkpatrick et al. [20]

126.45 2.259

Table 5.4: A comparison of the present results (drag, separation angle and length of the wake) with other numerical data.

The comparison with Kirkpatrick et al. [20] will be done in more detail, since they also use cut cells on a Cartesian grid. Therefore, the same grids were constructed as in [20], which is summarized in Table 5.5.

Grid grid A grid B grid C grid D

Total number of cells 58 126 78 202 108 271 144 297

Number of cells along the cylinder diameter 10 20 40 80

Table 5.5: A summary of the four grids that are used to compare the present results with results of Kirkpatrick et al. [20].

In Figure 5.7, a comparison is made between the skin friction on grid B and D. As seen before, the skin friction shows wiggles on grid D, which contains severe stretching. The simulations on all four grids have also been performed on a stair-case geometry to show the improvement made by using cut cells. For grid B, results are shown in Figure 5.8. Here, similar behaviour is shown for both methods. To get an indication of the accuracy on the dierent grids with stair-case boundaries or cut cells, the separation angle and drag is drawn in Figure 5.9. The convergence for cut cells and stair-case boundaries appears to be pretty equivalent for both methods. To start with the separation angle, Kirkpatricks method converges approximately rst order, for both the cut-cell discretisation as well as the stair-case geometry. The present method is inaccurate at the coarsest grid, but the results on grid B, C, and D are all close to the correct solution. All eight simulations approximately give the correct solution for the drag coecient. The cut-cell method of Kirkpatrick et al. also has values for the drag close to each other on all grids. The stair-case answer converges, also for this quantity, perfectly rst order accurate.

90

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

0 0 45 90 135 180

0 0 45 90 135 180

Figure 5.7: A comparison (line: this method, dotted: Kirkpatrick et al. [20]) of the skin friction on grid B (left) and grid D (right).
6

4 0 2

0 45 90 135 180 0 45 90 135 180

Figure 5.8: A comparison (line: this method, dotted: Kirkpatrick et al. [20]) of Cp (left) and skin friction (right) on grid B with stair-case boundary.

5.2

Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=100

The Cartesian grid method is applied to compute the unsteady ow around a circular cylinder at Re = 100, where the Reynolds number Re is based upon the diameter of the cylinder and the free-stream velocity. The text of this section has been published in [11, 48]. This ow has served as a test case for various numerical approaches. In this section, the present results will be compared with results of Kravchenko et al. [25] and Persillon & Braza [37]. Kravchenko et al. considered the ow past a circular cylinder to evaluate their Galerkin B-spline method. Persillon and Braza studied the test case by means of a second-order, curvilinear, nite volume method. Experimental data can be found in reference [55] and the references therein. The inow boundary is taken at four diameters upstream from the cylinder. The inow condition reads v = 1, u = 0. The lateral boundaries are taken 8 diameters apart. At these boundaries the normal derivatives of the components of the velocity are set equal to zero. The outow is located at 10 diameters past the cylinder. Also at the outow, Neumann conditions are applied. Computations have been performed on four grids consisting of 100 120, 150 180, 200 240 and 400 480 points (in lateral and streamwise direction) respectively. The time integration is performed as proposed by

5.2 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=100

136 1.6

91

134 1.55 132

Error

Error
10 20 40 # cells along cylinder 80

130

1.5

128

1.45

126 1.4 10 20 40 # cells along cylinder 80

Figure 5.9: The separation angle (left) and drag (right) for this method (line) and [20] (dotted) with cut cells () and stair-case boundary (+) under grid renement. Verstappen et al. in [53]. Table 5.6 shows a comparison of bulk quantities as obtained from the ne-grid simulation with those of the references mentioned above. The good agreement with the other St 0.165 0.164 0.165 CD,p 0.93 0.97 1.0 CD,f 0.31 0.34 0.3 CD max CL 1.24 0.30 1.31 0.314 1.253 0.38 1.3 1.24-1.26 [45] sep 117 117.4 113.5 122 [10]

Present Ref. [25] Ref. [37] Exp. [18] Experiment 0.164-0.165

Table 5.6: Comparison with other simulations and experiments. When given, the drag coecient is written as the sum of the pressure drag and the viscous drag. The experimental data is taken from [55] and the references therein. Note: Ref. [25] gives the max CD . In the present case, max CD is 0.02 higher than mean CD . numerical simulation techniques as well as with the physical experiments conrms the correct behaviour of the present approach and shows that the symmetry-preserving Cartesian grid method forms a good alternative for boundary tted structured and boundary tted unstructured methods. Figure 5.10 (left) displays the pressure distribution at the surface of the cylinder as obtained with the symmetry-preserving Cartesian grid method. At all four grids the numerical result is in good agreement with an experimentally determined pressure distribution. To study the convergence of the symmetry-preserving scheme upon grid renement, the pressure drag CD,p and the separation angle sep are shown as function of the square of the mean mesh size in Figure 5.10 (right). The gure shows that CD,p and sep are (approximately) linear functions of the square of the mean mesh size. Hence, it may be concluded that the scheme is second order.

92

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

400x480 200x240 150x180 100x120 experiment [9]

0.95 sep

118

Cp

D,p

sep

0.94

CD,p

117

1 0 60 Angle 120 180

0.93 400x480 200x240 0.0625 0.25 150x180 0.4444

Squared mean mesh size (1/N2 ) x

116 100x120 1 x 104

Figure 5.10: (left) A comparison between experiment and simulation: the pressure distribution at the surface of the cylinder, as function of the angle. (right) The separation angle sep and pressure drag CD,p as function of the square of the mean mesh size.

5.3 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=3900

93

5.3

Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=3900

In the previous section the importance of the ow domain has become obvious. But a larger domain results in more grid cells and thus in higher computational costs. For the applications so far, this did not matter; the simulations were all computed on a normal PC and computational time varied from a few seconds to one day at most. For the ow around a circular cylinder at Re = 3900 this is dierent. Due to the increased memory requirements, a normal PC does not suce anymore and reducing the computational costs is now of main importance. Since the work to be done is equal to the work per time step multiplied by the number of time steps, both should be kept as small as possible. The computational work per time step can be kept small be keeping the number of grid cells as small as possible. This can be achieved by a small computational domain and a coarse grid. Both have to be determined by trial and error, experiences from lower Reynolds numbers, and of course some physical feeling. The number of time steps is determined by the physical simulation time divided by the time step. The time step is restricted by the stability region of the time integration method and the cell sizes. The best thing to do is to keep the smallest cell as large as possible. The rst simulation is performed on a grid that will appear to be too small. The computational domain equals [4, 4] [4, 10] [0, ], which is discretised using a 500 600 32 grid. At the inow (u, v, w) = (0, 1, 0) is prescribed. Since the third spatial direction is Fourier transformed, periodic boundary conditions have to be used for this direction. At all other boundaries Neumann conditions are used (outow boundaries). The outow boundaries should be chosen suciently far away to consider the ow as uniform. If the boundaries are chosen too close to the cylinder the Neumann boundary condition is not a good approximation, but it will not perform too badly either. The inow yields a bigger problem. Prescribing uniform ow too close to the cylinder will have bad inuence on the solution, since ow in front of the cylinder can already feel an obstacle coming. Figure 5.11 shows the pressure around the cylinder compared to experiments of Norberg (data obtained from [24]) and the streamwise velocities compared to experiments of Lourenco & Shih [27]. The proles of this streamwise velocity are shifted along the y -axis to t multiple proles in one plot. The magnitude of the shift in this gure and in subsequent gures can easily be read o from the y -axis. Clearly, the pressure deviates from what is expected and the velocities are too high. The simulation at Re = 40 showed the same behaviour at the small domain. Results can be greatly improved by not assuming that the ow velocity at innite distance in front of the cylinder equals one, which is of course not true if the numerical in- and outow boundaries are chosen too close to the cylinder. If the streamwise velocity in crosswise direction is examined in Figure 5.11, the approximate velocity innitely far away from the cylinder (so at 3.5 diameters) can be estimated at 1.14. Using this velocity for making quantities dimensionless, results are greatly improved, see Figure 5.12. To get better results, the simulation is performed on a domain that is twice larger in both x- and y -direction. To keep the computational costs as low as possible, the grid is not rened, but stretched more to retain the same number of nodes at the surface of the cylinder. Now the problem occurs that if the grid is stretched that severe, the smallest cell (at the origin) gets unacceptably small, being a too severe restriction on the time

94

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

0 Cp 0 v 1 1 2 4 45 90 135 180

0 x

Figure 5.11: (left) The Cp graph on a too small domain (line) compared to experiments of Norberg (), published by [24]. (right) The streamwise velocity (line) as function of the crosswise coordinate at 1.06, 1.54, and 2.02 diameters away from the cylinder centre, compared to experiments of Lourenco & Shih, also published in [24].

0 Cp 0 v 1 1 2 4 45 90 135 180

0 x

Figure 5.12: Same as Figure 5.11, but with a corrected free-stream velocity. step. In other words, if the uncut-cell volumes of cells at/near the cylinder surface are considered, the ratio of the smallest and largest cells is too small. This problem can be solved by generating the grid as was done for case J (coarse grid, strong stretching) for the Reynolds number of 40 in Section 5.1. Precisely, rst a grid in the x-direction (crosswise direction) is created by generating a uniform grid at 0.5 < x 0.5 containing half of the nodes, then the grid is stretched towards to boundaries at x = 8 and x = 8. Next, the grid in the y -direction is constructed by copying the rst half of the x-grid, then for 0 < y 20 the grid is stretched, see Figure 5.13. For both directions, care is taken for a continuous grid size at the transition between the uniform part and the stretched part of the grid. The stretching factor did not exceed 1.04. The smallest cell has size 2.8 103 2.8 103 9.8 102 , the largest cell 2.6 101 2.6 101 9.8 102 , which is approximately 104 times larger in volume. Results are averaged in time over approximately 10 shedding cycles and in space in the spanwise direction. The same simulation was also done on a grid that is the same in x- and y -direction, but has only 4 cells in the z -direction, in which the domain length was halved from [0, ] to [0, /2] for this case. Results will appear to be worse, but it should be kept in mind

5.3 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=3900

10
0

95

10

10

10

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

Figure 5.13: The grid size as function of the index (line: xi+1 xi , dashed: yj +1 yj ). that this case contains only 1.7 million cells instead of 13 million, which makes it suitable for a PC with one gigabyte memory. Results are split into a comparison with experiments (Section 5.3.1) and a comparison with other simulations (Section 5.3.2). All results are averaged in the spanwise direction and time.

5.3.1

Comparison with experiments

The Cp graph is compared rst, since this gives a good impression of the global behaviour of the ow. The only available experimental Cp data is from Norberg, which was published by Kravchenko et al. in [24] (2000) who obtained it from Mittal by private communication. The comparison is shown in Figure 5.14 (left). The typical constant pressure at the back of the cylinder is achieved very well by the current simulation with the ne grid. The current simulation with a coarse grid in the spanwise direction has a too low pressure at the back. The right picture of Figure 5.14 shows the skin friction. No measurements are available at this Reynolds number, the only data is from Son & Hanratty measured at Re = 5000 and only in front of the cylinder where the ow is still aligned. Unfortunately, wiggles are present in the current simulations and this should be a topic for further improvement. What happens in the wake is usually visualised by drawing the streamwise velocity at the centreline. As will be seen later, this velocity prole diers much for dierent methods and the results presented in Figure 5.15 will be discussed later. Apart from drawing the streamwise velocity along the centreline, the streamwise velocity can also be drawn along lines perpendicular to the centreline. A few measurements of such velocity proles exist and these are presented in Figure 5.16. Rather good agreement is obtained for the current results, even the simulation with only four cells in the spanwise direction does not perform too badly. At the same lines where the streamwise velocity is drawn in Figure 5.16, the crosswise velocity is drawn in Figure 5.17. These proles do not match as well as the streamwise velocity did, but at y/D = 3.0, for example, very good agreement is found with the measurements of Lourenco & Shih [27]. The results above all describe the mean ow, which is steady in time and uniform in the

96

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

30 1 25 20 Skin friction 45 90 135 180 15 10 5 1 0 5 0

Cp

45

90

135

180

Figure 5.14: Comparison of the Cp (left) and skin friction(right) with experimental data (line: DNS with nz = 32, dashed: simulation with nz = 4, : experiments of Norberg, data taken from Kravchenko et al. [24], : experiment of Son and Hanratty [41] at Re = 5000).
1

0.5 v 0 0.5 0

4 y

Figure 5.15: Comparison of the streamwise velocity at the centreline (line: DNS with nz = 32, dashed: simulation with nz = 4, 2: experiments of Ong & Wallace [35], : experiments of Lourenco & Shih, data taken from [24]). spanwise direction. However, the variation of the ow is important and Reynolds stresses are mostly used to quantify the uctuations in the ow. The four stresses compared are v 2 , u 2 , u v , and w 2 . These variables u , v , and w are the deviations from the mean velocity, so u = u + u , where u is the mean velocity in time and the spanwise direction. The two graphs for v 2 and u 2 match nicely with the measurements of Lourenco & Shih. For the latter the simulation with the coarse spanwise direction does not match well, but for the u v graph it is hard to say which one is better. The last graph for w 2 cannot be compared to measurements, since no experiments were found for this case. Noticeable is the high stress for the case with nx = 4, but this is easy to explain: since the grid is too coarse in the z -direction, the mean velocities in this direction are rough, and so the deviations large.

5.3 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=3900

97

1.1

y/D=1.06
1 0.9

y/D=4.00

y/D=1.54
0

y/D=7.00
0.7 v

y/D=2.02
1

y/D=10.0

y/D=3.00
2

0.5

3 4

0 x

0.3 4

0 x

Figure 5.16: Comparison of the streamwise velocity as function of the crosswise coordinate at seven dierent positions behind the cylinder with available experimental data. See Figure 5.15 for the legend.

0.05 0

y/D=1.06
0

y/D=4.00

0.5 u

y/D=1.54 y/D=7.00
0.05 y

y/D=2.02

y/D=10.0 y/D=3.00
0.1

1.5

0 x

0.15 4

0 x

Figure 5.17: The same as Figure 5.16, now for the crosswise velocity.

98

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

0.25

vv

0.6

uu

0.2 0.4 0.15 u2 0.1 0.2 0.05 0 2 1 0 x 1 2 0 2

0 x

0.15 0.1

uv

0.2

ww

0.15 0.05 uv 0 0.05 0.05 0.1 0.15 2 0 2 w2 1 0 x 1 2 0.1

0 x

Figure 5.18: Comparison of the Reynolds stresses at 1.54D behind the cylinder. See Figure 5.15 for the legend.

5.3 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=3900

99

5.3.2

Comparison with simulations

Various results of simulations exist for the ow around a circular cylinder at Re = 3900. A few of these simulations are used for comparing the current results with. In chronological order, the oldest results used are from Beaudan and Moin, obtained from a report from 1994 [1]. The numerical method used is a high order upwind-biased nite dierence technique applied to the compressible Navier-Stokes equations written in generalised coordinates. Mittal wrote reports in 1995 [31] and 1996 [32] concerning ow around a circular cylinder at Re = 3900. In the latter report, Mittal used LES on a curvilinear C-mesh with a circumscribing rectangle of [19, 17] [25, 25] [0, ]. In his paper of 1995, the grid in the spanwise direction was much smaller ([9.8, 9.8]) and these results will not be used for comparison. The grid consists of 401 120 48 2.3 106 nodes. The mean streamwise velocities close past the cylinder compare well with Lourenco & Shih [27], the crosswise velocities are too high. Further away, both the streamwise and crosswise velocities and Reynolds stresses compare well with the experiments of Ong & Wallace [35]. In 1998, results were published of Fr ohlich et al. [14] comparing two dierent codes for ow around a circular cylinder at Re = 3900 and Re = 140000. The best results, obtained from the nite volume code lesocc on a curvilinear grid, are used for the comparison. An O-grid is used with radius 15, which has a length of in the spanwise direction. The grid consists of 166 166 48 1.3 106 cells. The streamwise velocity in the wake shows a very good agreement with measurements of Lourenco & Shih [27]. Furthermore, u , v , u 2 , and v 2 are shown at 1.54D behind the cylinder. The mean streamwise velocity matches well with Lourenco & Shih, the mean spanwise velocity is signicantly larger. The same holds for the uctuations. Ma et al. [28] published in 2000 DNS and LES results at dierent Reynolds numbers, among which a DNS at Re = 3900. They employ the spectral/hp methods of the Nektar solver, with an unstructured grid, in which the number of unknowns corresponds to 2.5 106 cells. The mean streamwise velocities at 1.06D, 1.54D, and 2.02D behind the cylinder match quite well with the measurements of Lourenco & Shih, the deviations only resemble the experiment at distance 1.54D behind the cylinder. At distance 4D behind the cylinder the velocity is higher than the measurements of Ong & Wallace, however, at 7D and 10D good agreement was obtained. The Cp is too low at the base of the cylinder, compared to Norberg [34]. Also the skin friction was shown, compared to the experimental data of the skin friction at the front of the cylinder measured by Son & Hanratty at Re = 5000 [41], but this comparison does not seem very valuable. Kravchenko and Moin [24] tested their B-spline method at Re = 3900 on a C-type mesh with 1.3 106 cells. The Cp graph compares well with the experimental data of Norberg, the behaviour with the constant pressure at the back of the cylinder is obtained, although the level is a little too low. The streamwise velocity in the wake shows that the recirculation area is much larger than measured by Lourenco & Shih, the same holds of course for the mean streamwise velocity behind the cylinder. The crosswise velocity hardly resembles the measurements of Lourenco & Shih close behind the cylinder; at 6D, 7D, and 10D better results are obtained, for the mean streamwise velocity as well as for u v and v v .

100

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

Franke and Frank did large eddy simulations with a nite volume method on a curvilinear grid with 1.1 106 control volumes, published in 2002 [13]. Their mean velocities compare well with the DNS of Ma, less agreement is found for the Reynolds stresses. Mahesh et al. tested their non-dissipative method for unstructured hybrid grids. Results were published in 2004 in [29]. Although they used an unstructured mesh for the ow around a cylinder at Re = 3900, the mesh contains a lot of structure (like a C-mesh). It contains 1.5 106 cells. Finally, Park et al. [36] presented results of a LES study in 2004. Results are obtained from an O-type grid with 1.4 106 cells. The Cp plot shows a perfect match with Norbergs measurements. The streamwise velocity in the wake is within the range of other methods, although it does not match with the measurements of Lourenco & Shih, but most of the results presented in this section do not. The rst quantities that are compared are the Cp graphs and the skin friction. These are presented in Figure 5.19. The present results match well with the simulation of Park et al.; both Kravchenko et al. and Ma et al. have a lower pressure at the back of the cylinder. The maximum of the skin friction graph of Ma et al. is higher, but the shapes are quite equal, behind the cylinder the graphs almost coincide.
30 1 25 20 Skin friction 45 90 135 180 15 10 5 1 0 5 0

Cp

45

90

135

180

Figure 5.19: Comparison of Cp with other simulations (line: DNS with nz = 32, dashed: simulation with nz = 4, see Table 5.7 on page 105 for the meaning of the symbols). The next quantity to be compared is the streamwise mean velocity as function of the streamwise coordinate in Figure 5.20, so visualising the wake. The only accurate, experimental data that is available is from Lourenco & Shih and large dierences with this data occur for all simulations. It seems to be very sensitive for turbulence modelling, numerical parameters, domain sizes and so on. Therefore, it is impossible to say what the right answer is. However, the current results and the results of Fr ohlich et al. [14] and Park et al. [36] are relatively close to each other and are probably acceptable. The results of the streamwise velocity as function of the crosswise coordinate are of course strongly related to the previous result, the wake. Especially close behind the cylinder, say up to 2D, the disagreement in the streamwise velocity is most pronounced and this will thus also hold for Figure 5.21. Ma et al. [28] pay much attention to the shape of the mean velocity at y = 1.06, which is depicted in the upper graph in Figure 5.21 (left). This can either be a U-shape or a V-shape. The latter is physically the correct one, a U-shape can be obtained when the model is wrong in the spanwise direction (too

5.3 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=3900

1

101

0.5 v 0 0.5 0

4 y

Figure 5.20: Comparison of the streamwise velocity in the wake with other simulations, see Figure 5.19 and Table 5.7 for the legend. small for example). The current shape of the DNS simulations is a V-shape, although maybe not explicit enough, according to Figure 5.16. For this case, the simulation of Ma et al. is closer to the measurements of Lourenco & Shih. At a distance greater than 2D from the cylinder, the current results appear to be not totally symmetrical. This is due to the relatively short simulation time. This also explains why the minimum at y = 4 is too high, but further away from the cylinder it is ne again. Nevertheless, the current result is in good agreement with the simulations of Ma et al., Mittal, and Kravchenko et al.
1.1

y/D=1.06
1 0.9

y/D=4.00

y/D=1.54
0

y/D=7.00
0.7 v

y/D=2.02
1

y/D=10.0

y/D=3.00
2

0.5

3 4

0 x

0.3 4

0 x

Figure 5.21: Comparison of the streamwise velocity at dierent positions behind the cylinder, see Figure 5.19 and Table 5.7 for the legend. The crosswise velocity behind the cylinder, Figure 5.22, is compared to results of Ma et al., Kravchenko et al., and Mittal. At x = 1.06D, results were found in Kravchenko et al. and Ma et al., both conrming the strange wiggle found in the current Direct Numerical Simulation with nz = 32, but not with nz = 4. Up to 10D behind the cylinder very good agreement is obtained with all the reference solutions. Finally, the Reynolds stresses are compared. The deviation in the streamwise direction matches well with the available data. The deviation in crosswise direction, however, is

102
y/D=1.06

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

0.05 0

0 0.5 u

y/D=4.00

y/D=1.54 y/D=7.00
0.05 u

y/D=2.02

y/D=10.0 y/D=3.00
0.1

1.5

0 x

0.15 4

0 x

Figure 5.22: Comparison of the crosswise velocity at dierent positions behind the cylinder, see Figure 5.19 and Table 5.7 for the legend. signicantly dierent from the simulations of Fr ohlich et al., Ma et al., and Mittal. The same holds for u v , where the current simulation and the simulations of Beaudan & Moin dier from the other simulations and experiments. For the last stress, w 2 , not many data are available. Again rather good agreement with Beaudan & Moin is obtained.

5.3 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=3900

103

0.25

vv

0.6

uu

0.2 0.4 0.15

0.1 0.2 0.05

0 2

0 x

0 2

0 x

0.15 0.1

uv

0.2

ww

0.15 0.05 0 0.05 0.05 0.1 0.15 2 0 2 0.1

0 x

0 x

Figure 5.23: Comparison of the Reynolds stresses at 1.54D behind the cylinder, see Figure 5.19 and Table 5.7 for the legend.

104 Comparison of global ow quantities

Chapter 5. Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

The last part of the validation of the results is the comparison of mean global quantities. This comparison can be found in Table 5.7. The rst, and probably most important quantity, is the drag coecient. All available data are in good agreement; Ma et al. has the lowest drag coecient of 0.96, the largest is from Fr ohlich et al. who obtained 1.08. The current simulation with 32 cells in the spanwise direction is in the middle of the range. This drag consists of the mean pressure drag of 0.96 and the mean viscous drag of 0.05. The base pressure coecient is the (dimensionless) pressure behind the cylinder, so a quantity that can be read from the Cp graph. Since the Cp graph of the simulations diers most at the back of the cylinder, the base pressure coecient is strongly related to the pressure drag. The experimentally determined angle of separation is noticeably lower than the angles found in the computations. Especially Fr ohlich et al., Frank et al., and Ma et al. have angles of separation that seem to be too high. Beaudan et al. found the lowest angle, but this does certainly not mean that this angle is too low. The angles found in the current simulations are within the range of other simulations, although the angle found for the simulation with 4 cells in the spanwise direction is too high. The Strouhal number for simulations at Re = 100 was found to dier only in the third digit for dierent simulations. At the current Reynolds number, on the contrary, the range goes from 0.203 (Beaudan et al.) till 0.218 (Mahesh et al.). The three measurements of the Strouhal number, though, do agree; if this measured range is taken as correct, only the simulation of Kravchenko et al. and the present remain valid; Beaudan et al. probably has a too low value here. The last two columns of Figure 5.7 both describe the recirculation area. Large variation exists for the streamwise velocity prole at the centreline in the wake, which is expressed in the quantities Lr /D and Umin , the mean length of the recirculation region and the minimum mean streamwise velocity in the recirculation region, respectively. These quantities can be read from Figure 5.24, which is a zoom of Figures 5.15 and 5.20. Ma et al. and Fr ohlich et al. have the smallest recirculation area, but this is in rather good agreement with the measurements of Lourenco & Shih. Cardell predicts a larger recirculation area, and all other simulations have a length that extends Cardells measurement. The current simulation with nz = 4 gives a recirculation area that is too small, the simulation with nz = 32 is the only one giving a length that is in between both available measurements.

5.3 Flow around a circular cylinder at Re=3900

105

Ref. Son et al. (69) [41] Norberg (87) [34] Cardell (93) [5] Ong and Wallace (96) [35] Lourenco and Shih (93) [27] Beaudan et al. (94) [1] Mittal (96) [32] 2 Fr ohlich et al. (98) [14] Kravchenko et al. (00) [24] + Franke and Frank (02) [13] Mahesh et al. (04) [29] Park et al. (04) [36] 3 Ma et al. (00) [28] Present DNS (nz = 32) Present simu. (nz = 4)

CD

Cpb

Experiments

sep 85/86

St

Lr /D

Umin

0.98 0.9 0.215 0.21 0.215 0.203 0.207 0.216 0.210 0.209 0.218 0.209 0.203 0.210 0.180 1.33 1.19 1.36 1.4 1.09 1.35 1.64 1.35 1.37 1.12 1.26 1.05 0.24 0.31 0.35 0.24 0.37 0.31 0.33 0.32 0.30

0.99 1.01 1.0 1.08 1.04 0.98 1.00 1.02 0.96 1.01 1.13

0.94 0.93 1.03 0.94 0.85

86 84.8 86.9 88.1 88 88.2 87.6

LES

0.89 0.96 89.1 0.88 87.7 1.03 88.5

Table 5.7: Global ow quantities for cylinder ow at Re = 3900. The table compares the mean pressure drag, mean base pressure coecient, mean angle of separation, mean Strouhal number, mean length of the recirculation region, and minimum mean streamwise velocity in the recirculation region, respectively.

DNS

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4 0.5

1 y

1.5

Figure 5.24: Close-up of the streamwise velocity in the wake of the cylinder; and denote experiments of Cardell and Lourenco & Shih respectively, lines are simulations, see Table 5.7 for the legend.