Effect of Axis Ratio on Fluid Flow Around an Elliptic Cylinder—A Numerical Study

TLDR: In this paper, a detailed study about fluid flow characteristics over an elliptic cylinder placed in a free stream is performed and the influence of the axis ratio (AR) on wake length and wake formation is analyzed.

Abstract: The bluff body simulations over canonical forms like circular and square cylinders are very well studied and the correlations for bulk parameters like mean drag coefficient and Strouhal numbers for the same are reported widely. In the case of elliptic cylinder, the literature is very sparse, especially for moderate Reynolds number (Re). Hence, in this work, a detailed study about fluid flow characteristics over an elliptic cylinder placed in a free stream is performed. Simulations are carried out for different Re ranging from 50 to 500 with axis ratio (AR) varied between 0.1 to 1.0 in steps of 0.1. Immersed boundary method is used for the solid boundary condition implementation which avoids the grid generation for each AR and a single Cartesian grid is used for all the simulations. The effect of AR for various Reynolds numbers is also focused on using the in-house code. The influence of AR is phenomenal for all the Re and the values of wake length, drag coefficient, and Strouhal number decrease with decreasing AR for a particular Re. The critical ARs, for vortex shedding and wake formation, are identified for various Re. Detailed correlations for wake length, critical ARs for vortex shedding and wake formation, mean drag coefficient and Strouhal number, in terms of AR, are reported in this work. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4024862]