Numerical Characterisation of Active Drag and Lift Control for a Circular Cylinder in Cross-Flow

Abstract

Synthetic jet actuators have shown promise to control drag and lift for a bluff body in cross-flow. Using unsteady RANS CFD modelling, a significant modification of the drag coefficient for a circular cylinder in cross-flow at R e = 3900 is achieved by varying the actuation frequency. The variation in actuation frequency corresponds to a range in Stokes number of 2.4 < S t o < 6.4. The trends in drag coefficient modification largely agree with the findings of past publications, achieving a maximum drag reduction at S t o = 4.9 for a fixed jet Reynolds number of the synthetic jet of R e U ¯ o = 12. A decrease in the adverse pressure gradient near the jet orifice correlated with a momentum increase in the viscous sublayer and stronger vortical structures at the rear of the cylinder. In these same conditions, a decrease in turbulence intensity was observed in the far field wake, which is a relevant finding in the context of wind and tidal turbine arrays.

Keywords

• active flow control
• synthetic jet actuator
• computational fluid dynamics
• bluff body wake
• boundary layer
• shear layer