Open Access

ARTICLE

Numerical Simulations of Flows over a Pair of Cylinders at Different Arrangements using the Immersed Boundary Method

A.R. da Silva¹, A. Silveira-Neto^2,3, D.A. Rade^2,4, R.Francis⁴, E.A. Santos⁴

1 Federal University of Itajubá, Mechanical Engineering Institute, Campus José Rodrigues Seabra P.O. Box 50, CEP 37500-902, Itajubá-MG - Brazil.
2 Federal University of Uberlândia, School of Mechanical Engineering, Campus Santa Mônica P.O. Box 593, CEP 38400-902 - Uberlândia - MG – Brazil.
3 Corresponding author. Tel.: +55 34 32 39 41 48; Fax: +55 34 32 39 42 06. E-mail address:aristeus@mecanica.ufu.br.
4 Center of Research of PETROBRAS Submarine Technology - CENPES/PDP/TS, Rio de Janeiro -RJ - Brazil.

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2009, 50(3), 285-304. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2009.050.285

Abstract

In the context of computational fluid dynamics a numerical investigation of incompressible flow around fixed pairs of rigid circular cylinders was carried out. The two-dimensional filtered Navier-Stokes equations with the Smagorinsky sub-grid scale model were solved using a Cartesian non-uniform grid. The immersed Boundary Method with the Virtual Physical Model was used in order to model the presence of two circular cylinders embedded in the flow. The fractional time step method was used to couple pressure and velocity fields. The simulations were carried out for Reynolds number equal to 72,000 for pitch ratio equal to 2 and different arrangements regarding the relative positions of the cylinders. The flow interference between the two cylinders, the vortex shedding process and the behavior of the dynamic coefficients were investigated. The results of the present study were compared with experimental data from the literature. The Immersed Boundary Method has showed to be efficient in the simulation of flows, taking into account the presence of multi-body compositions.

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Keywords

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