Separated Shear Layer Investigations using Discrete Vortex Methods with Experimental Validation

Abstract eng:
The research described in this paper employs discrete vortex methods to investigate separated shear layers about bluff bodies. Because the shear layer controls the extreme pressures on the surface of the body, understanding the relevant physics is particularly important for designing structures that may mitigate extreme loads. The results reported here involve a 2D discrete vortex model which has a combination of vortex blob and sheet method with the panel method. While discrete vortex methods have been used in the past for bluff body flow simulations, this project involves careful simulation of the nearsurface flow physics and carefully planned experimental validation. The results presented here include work done on a body of rectangular cross section. A 2D simulation of smooth flow past the body at Reynolds number 21000 was conducted with particular focus on behavior of shear layer. A supporting series of experiments using hot wire anemometry done at the same Reynolds number compared favorably in a mean sense but showed that work remains to match all the dynamic aspects of the shear layer structure. This work represents the initial stages of a larger computational/experimental study of how the physics of separated shear layers can influence wind engineering design.

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