Numerical study of bluff body flow structures

Our recent progress in numerical studies of bluff body flow structures and a new method for the numerical analysis of near wake flow field for high Reynolds number flow are introduced. The paper consists of three parts. In part one, the evolution of wake vortex structure and variation of forces on a flat plate in harmonic oscillatory flows and in in-line steady-harmonic combined flows are presented by an improved discrete vortex method, as the Keulegan-Carpenter number (KC) varies from 2 to 40 and ratios ofU _m toU ₀ are ofO(10⁻¹),O(1) andO(10), respectively. In part 2, a domain decomposition hybrid method, combining the finite-difference and vortex methods for numerical simulation of unsteady viscous separated flow around a bluff body, is introduced. By the new method, some high resolution numerical visualization on near wake evolution behind a circular cylinder at Re=10², 10³ and 3×10³ are shown. In part 3, the mechanism and the dynamic process for the three-dimensional evolution of the Kármán vortex and vortex filaments in braid regions as well as the early features of turbulent structure in the wake behind a circular cylinder are presented numerically by the vortex dynamics method. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Laboratory for Nonlinear Mechanics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, as well as by the National Basic Research project “Nonlinear Science”.