NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF LAMINAR UNSTEADY WAKES BEHIND TWO INLINE SQUARE CYLINDERS CONFINED IN A CHANNEL

Two-dimensional numerical investigations have been carried out to study the behavior of unsteady wake for flow past an inline arrangement of square cylinders confined in a channel. The present work aims to study the influence of the relative size and arrangement of the two cylinders on vortex shedding characteristics in their wakes. A computational code has been developed using finite difference approach based on modified MAC algorithm for solution of governing flow equations. Effect of size ratio of the two cylinders, the cylinder spacing in streamwise direction and flow Reynolds number on the wake flow characteristics of the two cylinders have been presented. The temporal characteristics of the wake are analyzed using time series analysis. Results indicate that for a given Reynolds number, there exist a range of values of size ratio and cylinder spacing for which vortex shedding can occur in the wake of the upstream cylinder.