The 14th Asia Congress of Fluid Mechanics - 14ACFM

October 15 - 19, 2013; Hanoi and Halong, Vietnam

Flow past circular cylinder with forward splitter plate

P. Suriyanarayanan*, Kiran Chutkey and L. Venkatakrishanan
*
e-mail address of presenting authors: suriya@nal.res.in

Abstract Drag reduction is of more importance on
bodies like circular cylinders. Majority of the studies
focused on the modification of the wake region while
little effort has gone into the nose streamlining of such
bluff body. In this study, experiments were carried out on
a circular cylinder of 40 mm diameter with different
forward splitter plates at a Reynolds number of 5.33 x
104. Planar PIV, surface pressure and hot wire
measurements were carried out to understand the flow
field around the cylinder for different splitter plate
geometries. The splitter plates at the front end of the
cylinder modify the flow field near the stagnation region
which in turn modifies the flow in the cylinder wake.
Key Words: Circular cylinder, Shedding frequency,
splitter plate
equal to cylinder diameter. Configurations 3 and 4 are
modifications of configuration 2. A plate of length one
fifth of the cylinder diameter is attached to FSP at angles
45o and 90o as shown in figure 2. The introduction of
these front end splitter plates create (a) low static
pressure field at the front end of the cylinder (b) change
the initial conditions for the vortex formation there by
affecting the cylinder wake. The present study aims at
gaining insight into the mechanism associated with the
vortex formation and the shedding process.

1. Introduction
The flow past a circular cylinder is one of the oldest
problems in fluid mechanics. It still remains a relevant
problem even today because of its wide practical
applicability as well as for its theoretical interest. From
an engineering point of view, the interest has been Figure 1. Schematic of flow field around cylinder with a
towards reducing the drag and unsteady forces on the forward splitter plate
cylinder using flow control devices. The most popular
among the control devices, are the splitter plates placed
at the rear end of the cylinder which are referred in
literature [1,2] as the Backward Splitter Plate (BSP). The
BSP reduces the communication between the top and
bottom of the shear layer and has been found to be
effective in reducing the unsteadiness of the wake [2] for
plate length more the five times the cylinder diameter.
On the contrary for a splitter plate placed at the front end
of the cylinder referred to as the Forward Splitter Plate
(FSP), the flow field at the front end of the cylinder is
modified as shown in figure 1. Because of the presence Figure 2. Schematic of forward splitter plates
of FSP, a separation bubble is formed at the splitter plate
cylinder junction. This has been referred to as nose 2. Experimental details
streamlining by Viswanath et. al. [3] and Madhavan [4].
The optimum plate length was reported to be equal to the Experiments were carried out in the 0.55 x 0.55 m low
cylinder diameter. They have also reported that the speed wind tunnel at NAL. The circular cylinder model
shedding frequency increases because of the introduction along with the splitter plate was mounted horizontally in
of a FSP. a removable test section with a glass window on one side
which provided viewing access. Measurements were
In the present work, an attempt has been made to modify made at a free-stream velocity (U ) of 20m/s; the
the cylinder front end region and study its likely effects corresponding Reynolds number ReD (based on the
on the wake and drag of the cylinder. In the process the cylinder diameter) was 5.33 x 104. Fig.2 shows the
conventional FSP has been modified as shown in the details of the model and Fig.3 shows schematic of the
figure 2. These have been referred to as configurations 1 experimental setup.
to 4. Configuration 1 refers to simple cylinder;
configuration 2 refers to cylinder with FSP of length
The cylinder model was made out of glass fiber
reinforced plastic and was polished to a smooth surface
finish. The model diameter and span were equal to
40mm and 545 mm respectively. A slot of 2 mm was cut
across the span of cylinder to insert a splitter plate. The
end plates at the span-wise sides of the cylinder model
had extended shafts to accommodate the splitter plates.
grabbing of the images are carried out using IDT motion
pro Timing hub from IDT systems, USA. The PIV
image acquisition and processing was carried out by IDT
ProVISION-XS software. This optical arrangement
along with the chosen interrogation size of 24 x 24 pixels
resulted in a physical resolution of 2.3mm x 2.3mm for
the data.

3. Results and discussion

The surface pressure on the cylinder is shown in figure 4.

Figure 3. Schematic of cylinder model in tunnel

The model has 35 pressure ports in the mid span region.
The pressure ports were of 1 mm diameter and were
offset from each other by an angle of 10o. The surface
pressure measurements were carried out using two 32
port ESP scanners.
2.1. Hot wire setup
The shedding frequency of the circular cylinder is
measured using the single component Dantec constant
temperature Hotwire system. The hotwire probe was Figure 4. Pressure distribution on cylinder for all
placed at a diameter distance vertically and 5.5 diameters configurations
distance horizontally from the center of cylinder. The
analog signal from the hot wire was acquired at a The simple cylinder configuration (configuration 1)
sampling rate of 1KHz. shows a favourable, adverse and zero pressure gradient
regimes around the cylinder. For the FSP configuration 1,
2.2. PIV setup
The flow-field with seed particles was illuminated by a
double pulsed, Nd:YAG, PIV 400 laser having a
repetition frequency of 15Hz. The beam steering was
achieved using Newport optics and the arrangement
made in such a way that the beam could be positioned at
any point in a 2-D plane parallel to the flow. The beam
then passed through the beam forming optics and was
spread as a thin (0.8mm) sheet of light with nearly flat
intensity profile in the measurement plane using a
combination of negative and positive spherical lenses
and a cylindrical lens.
The velocity field was measured in a 2D plane parallel to
the free-stream. The flow was imaged in two zones of
190mm x 190mm each with an overlap of 20mm, using
two Motion pro Y5 cameras having a sensor resolution
of 2336(H) x 1728(V) pixels. The camera was mounted
on a vertical post, which was firmly fixed on the
laboratory floor. A Nikon 85mm lens was used as the Figure 5. Stream-wise velocity distribution in the
imaging optics for the camera. This provided a near flat wake of the configuration-1
focus of the viewing area at a distance of 1m. The
synchronization of the laser pulsing with camera and the a small separated region is observed near front end
followed by the conventional favourable, adverse and

2
 The separation point angle for all the FSP configurations

Figure 6. Stream-wise velocity distribution in the

wake of the configuration-2 Figure 8. Stream-wise velocity distribution in the wake
of the configuration-4
is same, indicating that the wake width thickness is only
dictated by the nose streamlining effect. This reduced
wake thickness confirms the reduction in pressure drag
of the cylinder, which is listed in table 2. The form drag
for modified FSP configurations is an order of
magnitude less than the configurations 1 and 2.

Figure 7. Stream-wise velocity distribution in the wake

of the configuration-3

zero pressure gradient regimes. For this configuration it

can be observed that the favorable and adverse regimes
have increased indicating a higher kinetic energy of the
flow. Also the base pressure is higher as compared to the
configuration 1. For the modified FSP configurations 3
Figure 9. Stream-wise velocity distribution along the
and 4, the pressure distribution is substantially modified.
cylinder centerline
In these cases the cylinder is in the wake of smaller
plates attached to the FSP (see figure 2). Hence for these
Two dimensional PIV measurements were carried near
cases the pressure variation around the cylinder is much
the mid span region of the circular cylinder. The
less as compared to the other two configurations. A zero
stream-wise velocity contours along with velocity
pressure gradient is observed at the front end, followed
vectors are shown in figures 5 to 8 for all the
by an adverse gradient. Later on the conventional
configurations. For the simple cylinder i.e., configuration
favorable, adverse and zero pressure gradient are
1 the recirculation bubble is thicker in size and shorter in
observed. The base pressure for these cases has
length as compared to the FSP case (configuration 2).
increased by two times as compared to the
configurations 1 and 2. The separation point angle and In table 2, the shedding frequency for different
the base pressure coefficient have been listed in table 1. configurations is presented. The shedding frequency in
the presence of FSP increases as compared to the simple configurations has been brought out with regard to drag
cylinder configuration. When comparing the reduction. The front end splitter plate configurations
manipulate the initial conditions for the cylinder wake
flow. It has been observed that the drag in the presence
of a forward splitter plate can be reduced by 40%

Figure 10. Stream-wise velocity distribution in the
wake of cylinder at X/D equal to 2
configurations 2, 3 and 4, the shedding frequency is
found to be minimum in with configuration-4.
References
[1] Roshko, A., On the drag and shedding frequency of
two-dimensional bluff bodies, NACA TN 3169, 1954.
[2] Zradkovich M M, Review and Classification of
various aerodynamic and hydrodynamic means of
suppressing vortex shedding, J. Wind Engg. And
Industrial Aero., vol. 7, p145, 1981.
[3] Viswanath, PR, Prabhu A and Srinivas T, Drag
reduction of circular cylinder with a forward splitter
plate, Recent Advances in Experimental Fluid
Mechanics, Ed F G Zhuang, Proc of the 1 st Intl Conf. on
Exp. Fluid Mech., Chengdu, China, p293, 1991.
[4] Madhavan, KT, Phase-averaged LDV
measurements in a Bluff Body Wake, NAL PD EA 107,
April 2001, National Aerospace Laboratories, India.
[5] L Venkatakrishnan, K T Madhavan, P R Viswanath,
Phase-averaged 2D PIV measurements on a cylinder
with forward splitter plate, Discussion Meeting on Flow
Control and Diagnostics, 19-22 February 2006, Coorg,
India.

Table 1. Separation point and recirculation bubble length Author Information

Cylinder Base Separati Recirculation Mr P Suriyanarayanan, Scientist, Experimental

configur pressure on point bubble length Aerodynamic Division, CSIR-National Aerospace
ation coefficient normalized with Laboratories, PB No: 1779, Bangalore 560017, India
cylinder diameter Mr Kiran Chutkey, QHS Fellow, Experimental
o Aerodynamic Division, CSIR-National Aerospace
1 -1.1 80 1.00
Laboratories, PB No: 1779, Bangalore 560017, India
2 -0.95 122 o 1.05
Dr L Venkatakrishnan, Chief Scientist and Head of the
3 -0.47 122 o
1.20 Division, Experimental Aerodynamic Division,
CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories, PB No: 1779,
4 -0.44 122o 1.25 Bangalore 560017, India

Table 2. Shedding frequency and Drag

Cylin Shedding Cylinder Total drag %

der frequency Pressure coefficient reduction
confi drag in drag
gurati coefficient
on
1 102 Hz 0.99 1.36 -
2 123 Hz 0.75 1.18 13.2
3 129 Hz 0.07 1.13 17.1
4 116 Hz -0.08 0.82 40

Conclusion
To summarize, the effectiveness of different FSP