Affiliations: Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Army HPC
Research Center, Rice University - MS 321, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX 77005,
USA
Abstract: In this paper we focus on 3D simulation of unsteady wake flow behind
a circular cylinder. We show that in addition to accurate formulations and
sufficiently-refined meshes, efficient computing methods are essential
components of an effective simulation strategy. We use the Multi-Domain Method
(MDM) we developed recently in computation of two cases. At Reynolds number
300, we demonstrate how the MDM enables us to use highly-refined meshes to
capture wake patterns which we otherwise cannot fully represent. At Reynolds
number 140, we show that with the MDM we can extend our computations
sufficiently downstream, and with sufficient accuracy, to successfully capture
the second phase of the Karman vortex street, which has been observed in
laboratory experiments, and which has double the spacing between the vortices
compared to the first phase.
Keywords: unsteady wake flow, multi-domain method, vortex shedding