Effect of side ratio on wake characteristics of channel-confined rectangular cylinder in cross flow

Even though the flow past rectangular cylinder is geometrically simple, it involves a high level of complexity because of alternate re-attachment on its top and bottom surfaces. With this as motivation, a two-dimensional numerical study has been carried out to investigate the effect of Side Ratio (SR) of a channel-confined rectangular cylinder on its wake characteristics at fixed Reynolds number of 100. Computations are extended to determine the critical Reynolds number for onset of vortex shedding for different values of SR. The study elaborates on the effect of variation of SR on variations in wake length and width, centreline velocities upstream and downstream of the cylinder, profile of streamwise velocity component as well as the variation of span-averaged pressure along length of the channel. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.