Wake flow behind a curved cylinder

Abstract

This thesis reports the result of an experiment measuring the wake flow behind a curved circular cylinder at Re=3900 in water. The measurement technique used was Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The cylinder is a convex configuration with a quarter of a ring with a straight elongation of the cylinder in each end. It was mounted with one of the elongations perpendicular to the incoming flow, and the other elongation pointing downstream. Many of the trends in the results of this thesis are in good agreement with the results by Gallardo et al (2014) [6], such as the velocity fluctuations, average flow fields and vortex dislocations. The recirculation length measured in this thesis was longer than the results by Gallardo et al (2014) [6], probably due to the difference between the numerical setup and the experimental setup.Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) measurements were also used, but gave inaccurate results. Further work will be to examine the measurement limits for the LDV in the Circulation Water Tunnel (CWT) with respect to direction and velocity magnitude.