Journal of Flow Visualization and Image Processing

ISSN for PRINT: 1065-3090

For Online Access

Best Paper Award Selection - Editorial Board Site

2002, Volume9

Issue 2&3

174 pages

Issue price - $280.00

X. W. Wang
Department of Mechanical Engineering, North China Institute of Astronautic Engineering, Langfang, Hebei, P.R. China

H. J. Zhang
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Y. Zhou
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

J. Y. Tu
Centre for Advanced Numerical Computation in Engineering and Science, The University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia

Turbulent near wakes of three side-by-side circular cylinders with equal or unequal spacing have been experimentally investigated using flow visualization and the hot-wire anemometry. The work aims to understand the effect of unequal cylinder spacing on the vortex streets behind the three cylinders. When the cylinder centre-to-centre spacing is identical, i.e., T₁/d = T₂/d - 1.5, the flow is symmetric about the centreline, with a wide wake behind the central cylinder and two narrow wakes on each side of the wide wake. The dominant frequency in the narrow wakes is about 5.4 times that in the wide wake. However, as T₂/d is slightly increased to 1.6, a remarkable change occurs in terms of the dominant frequencies, vortex formation and downstream evolution. The vortex generation mechanism is also discussed.

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