Effect of Corner-Arc on the Flow Structures Around a Square Cylinder

In this paper, flow structures around a corner modified square cylinder (side dimension, Bo) are presented and discussed. Cylinders with various corner arcs (circular) were considered (arc radius ‘r’). For various Corner Ratios (CR = r/Bo), values ranging from 0 to 0.5, flow visualization experiments were conducted in a water channel and the results are reported at Re = 2100 (based on Bo). Results presented are for two cases (a) stationary cylinders reporting the values of CD (coefficient of drag), St (Strouhal no.), and D (vortex size) and (b) oscillating cylinders at fe/fs = 1 (fe is the cylinder excitation frequency and fs is the vortex shedding frequency) and a/Bo = 0.8 (a is the cylinder oscillation amplitude). The work is aimed to explore the most effective configuration for drag reduction. Cylinder with corner ratio of 0.2 is proved to be the most effective one among the cases considered in this study with 19.3% drag reduction. As a major highlight, in contrast to the results of the previous studies, current study do not reveal a monotonous decrease of drag with increasing corner modification. Instead, it is shown here that, there is a specific value of CR ratio where the drag is the minimum most. A peculiar type of vortex structure was observed in the cases of stationary cylinders with CR > 0.2, contributing to the increase in drag. In the case of oscillating cylinders, description of one complete cycle for all CR ratios at various time instances are presented. The near-wake structures were observed to be dependent on the CR ratio. Counter intuitively, cylinder oscillation does not bring major difference in vortex size compared to the stationary case.