STEADY INCOMPRESSIBLE-FLOW PAST A ROW OF CIRCULAR-CYLINDERS

Numerical solutions are presented for steady two-dimensional incompressible flow past an infinite row of cylinders (of unit radii, with distances W between their centres). The calculations cover R less-than-or-equal-to 700 for 5 less-than-or-equal-to W less-than-or-equal-to infinity and also R = 800 for 5 less-than-or-equal-to W less-than-or-equal-to 100 (where R denotes the Reynolds number based on the cylinder diameters). The recirculation regions (wake bubbles) are found to grow in length approximately linearly with R in all cases. For high values of R, a major change occurs in their character when W is increased past W(crit) almost-equal-to 16. While they have remained slender up to this point (essentially only stretching in length in proportion to R), their centres of circulation have moved towards their ends. As W is further increased, the wake bubbles widen rapidly, beginning from the rear of the wakes. In the limit of W --> infinity, the present results agree with the previous ones for a single cylinder as reported by Fornberg (1985).