Effect of arc-shaped vertical control plate on heat and mass transfer in uniform flow past an isothermally heated circular cylinder

The current work investigates the effect of an arc-shaped vertical control plate on the heat and mass transfer in uniform flow past an isothermally heated circular cylinder. The control plate is positioned downstream at various distances from the circular cylinder's surface. The governing equations are discretized by the higher order compact (HOC) finite difference scheme, and then this system of discretized equations is solved by using a bi-conjugate gradient stabilized iterative method for Prandtl number $Pr=0.7$, Reynolds number $Re=150$. To investigate the effect of an arc-shaped control plate on heat and mass transfer, we consider a range of nondimensional distances between the circular cylinder and the control plate, $0.5\le d∕R_0\le 8$, where $d$ is the control plate's distance and $R_0$ is the cylinder's radius. The exact timing and location of the bifurcation points are calculated by using topological aspect-based structural bifurcation analysis. Significant effects of various locations of the control plate on periodic wake and heat transfer are observed. It is found that the increasing distance of the control plate from the cylinder delays the occurrence of the structural bifurcation and shifts the bifurcation points upwards in the upper half and downwards in the lower half of the cylinder. Our study shows that the specific location of the control plate can fully suppress the vortex shedding. Time-averaged total Nusselt number can be drastically reduced by increasing the distance between the control plate and the cylinder. With proper positioning, the vertical control plate can lessen the time-averaged drag force by up to $22.5\%$ when compared to a cylinder without a control plate. Overall, this work presents many new phenomena that have not been reported before.