Flow pattern and heat transfer past two tandem arranged cylinders with oscillating inlet velocity

Unsteady laminar convective fluid flow and heat transfer past two cylinders in tandem arrangement is investigated. Besides forced mixing by the natural vortex streets, extra imposed oscillating inlet velocity are considered. The lift and drag coefficients and Strouhal number for a single cylinder and their dependence on Reynolds number are also provided to validate the calculations with previous experiments. Different frequencies and amplitudes of the oscillating flows are set as inlet boundary conditions. For the cycle effect, at some specified points of the cycle ratios, the heat transfer enhancement of the upstream cylinder and the downstream cylinder are relatively larger due to the combined-effect of the natural vortex streets and the imposed oscillating inlet flows. The interaction between the natural vortex streets and imposed oscillating inlet flow leads to non-regular shaped vortices with increased flow mixing. For the amplitude effect, Nusselt numbers of the two cylinders are both greatly increased with increased amplitude ratios. With increased amplitude ratios, the vortex street expands and vibrates in a larger region which leads to stronger flow mixing and higher heat transfer. Generally, oscillating inlet flows can efficiently increase the heat transfer of two cylinders in crossflow without increasing the flow rate of the coolants.