NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF LAMINAR FLOW PAST OSCILLATING CIRCULAR, SQUARE AND ELLIPTICAL CYLINDER

Abstract

flow past circular cylinder is a fundamental fluid mechanics problem of practical importance. It has
potential relevance to many practical applications such as submarines, off shore structures, bridge piers, pipelines etc. In
scientific terms, the flow around circular cylinders exhibits various important physical phenomena, such as separation,
vortex shedding and turbulence in the wake, at relatively low flow speed. Building on understanding of a single stationary
cylinder, many researchers have focused on multiple stationary or oscillating cylinders.
The present study numerically investigates the two-dimensional laminar flow past a circular, square and elliptical cylinder
forced to oscillate transverse to the free-stream. The analysis are performed at a various range of cylinder oscillation
frequency ranged between 0.8 and 1.2 of the natural vortex shedding frequency, and the oscillation amplitude is 50% of
the cylinder diameter at fixed Reynolds number of 185 showing the typical two-dimensional vortex shedding. Numerical
study carried out with CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) tools FLUENT with dynamic mesh. UDF (User Defined
Function) are incorporated with FLUENT to give simple harmonic motion to cylinder.