Unsteady Aerodynamics and Turbulent Near-Wake Characterization of Static and Rotating Cylinder Sytems

Abstract

External flows around bluff bodies have been broadly investigated due to their great importance in engineering applications including aircraft and missile development, marine and naval structures, vehicle aerodynamics, wind power generation, and turbulence near suspension bridge cables. The circular cylinder has been the topic of a significant portion of this research due to its simple geometry and its ability to generally represent numerous engineered and natural structures. The goal of Phase 1 of this is to capture and analyze wake structures formed by variations on the geometry of a circular cylinder. The goal of Phase 2 is to observe the effects of artificially generated turbulence on the flow over a dimpled airfoil. High-image-density particle image velocimetry (PIV) is used to obtain velocity vector fields, flow standard deviation, and vorticity.