Numerical Research of Flow past a Circular Cylinder with Splitter Plate at a Subcritical Reynolds Number Region

Numerical research of flow past a circular cylinder with a splitter at the subcritical Reynolds number region of 5 × 10 ⁴ —9 × 10 ⁴ was researched based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) through solving twodimensional incompressible unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations with the shear stress transport (SST) k-ω turbulence model. Three different grid resolutions were employed in the verification and validation study of the adopted turbulence model. Various fluid characteristics such as Strouhal number, lift coefficient of the cylinder and the splitter with respect to various splitter lengths and different Reynolds numbers were investigated. It was revealed that the lift coefficient ratio of the splitter over the cylinder remains near 1.6 when the splitter length is 1.5—4 times the cylinder’s diameter. Vortex shedding is strongly inhibited when the splitter length is greater than a critical value of around four times the cylinder’s diameter. The phase difference of the lift coefficient on the upper and lower surface of the splitter varies between −30° and 30°. The maximal lift coefficients are reached when the splitter length is about 2 times the cylinder’s diameter. Besides, the splitter length has little influence on the separation angle around the cylinder.