The Effect of Blockage on High Reynolds Number Flow over a semi-circular Obstacle

Abstract

In order to map the effects of blockage and aspect ratio, pressure distributions were measured around four different floor-mounted semi-circular cylinders in nominally two-dimensional flow. Diameters ranged from 0.05m to 0.30m for 0.3·10^5<3.5·10^5. No significant blockage effects were found for B=0.05. It was shown that by using the bulk flow velocity as the reference velocity, blockage and aspect ratio effects could be partially counteracted. The use of the bulk flow velocity was identified to be especially efficient in correcting the base pressure coefficient, but led to a larger variation of the minimum pressure coefficient with Re, for a given blockage ratio. Results also indicate that blockage is the governing factor of the base pressure coefficient for L/D>10, while the aspect ratio has the largest influence below this threshold. Separation bubbles occur in a manner similar to that of circular cylinders. The results do, however, indicate that the progression from laminar separation to purely turbulent separation may be accelerated by increased blockage. Further, the speed up over the cylinder was found to be approximately constant for a given blockage, and proportional to the square root of the blockage.