Archive of Mechanical Engineering

Abstract

The laminar flow around two side-by-side circular cylinders was numerically investigated using a vortex-in-cell method combined with a continuous-forcing immersed boundary method. The Reynolds number (Re) of the flow was examined in the range from 40 to 200, and the distance between the cylinders varies from 1.2D to 6D, where D is the cylinder diameter. Simulation results show that the vortex wake is classified into eight patterns, such as single-bluff-body, meandering-motion, steady, deflectedin-one-direction, flip-flopping, anti-phase-synchronization, in-phase-synchronization, and phase-difference-synchronization, significantly depending on the Re, the cylinder distance, and the initial external disturbance effects. The anti-phase-synchronization, in-phase-synchronization, and phase-difference-synchronization vortex patterns can be switched at a low Re after a long time evolution of the flow. In particular, the single-bluff-body and flip-flopping vortex patterns excite the oscillation amplitude of the drag and lift coefficients exerted on the cylinders.