Title: Wake interaction studies of flow past tandem circular cylinders for different diameter and gap ratios

Authors: R. Rajita Shenoi; Neeraj Paul Manelil; T. Sundararajan; Shaligram Tiwari

Addresses: Maritime Technology Division, Ghent University, Belgium ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India

Abstract: Three-dimensional computations are carried out to study the flow past tandem stationary cylinders at moderate Reynolds number (Re = 2,000). Wake structures are analysed with the help of instantaneous vorticity contours and hydrodynamic characteristics are reported using drag and lift coefficient plots. Effects of diameter ratio and gap ratio on wake structure as well as its dynamic characteristics are presented. Cross recurrence analysis is performed to study the coupled interactions between cylinder wakes. In particular, conditions for the in-phase synchronisation, out-of-phase coupling or non-synchronous coupling of the wakes behind the tandem cylinders are identified. Qualitative results obtained from cross recurrence plots are quantified using parameters such as recurrence rate, determinism and averaged diagonal length. These results give deep insight into wake synchronisations between the cylinders. In-phase or out-of-phase wake oscillations can lead to catastrophic structural failures and predicting such conditions can be a useful design tool.

Keywords: tandem circular cylinders; diameter ratio; inter-cylinder spacing; dynamic wake characteristics; recurrence plots; synchronisation.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2022.124585

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2022 Vol.22 No.4, pp.219 - 235

Received: 28 May 2020
Accepted: 28 Mar 2021
Published online: 29 Jul 2022 *

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