Branching of a horseshoe vortex around surface-mounted rectangular cylinders

1432-1114

Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000

Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics

Abstract Flow visualizations and surface pressure measurements are performed to study the branching phenomenon of a horseshoe vortex upstream of a series of rectangular cylinders with aspect ratios ranging from 0 to 17. The Reynolds numbers are 500 for visualization experiments and 1990 to 6650 for wind tunnel surface pressure measurements. The flow visualization results indicate that a horseshoe vortex will first evolve into a wavy structure and for aspect ratios which are equal or larger than 10, the wavy horseshoe vortex will branch itself into smaller regular vortices. The waviness disappears as soon as branching occurs. The number of the branched smaller vortices increases as the aspect ratio increases further.

Electronic Resource