Study of the vortex shedding flow around a body near a moving ground

The two-dimensional viscous incompressible fluid flow around a circular cylinder near a moving ground is numerically simulated. In a moving ground one eliminates the influence of the ground boundary layer, which is a crucial factor in the numerical simulation of the flow around a body moving in a close vicinity to a flat ground. A Lagrangian mesh-free vortex method is used to calculate global and local quantities of high Reynolds number flow of 1.0 x 10(5). This method is modified to take into account the sub-grid scale phenomena through a second-order velocity structure function model adapted to the Lagrangian scheme. In the present algorithm vortices with a Lamb core are generated only on the circular cylinder surface to ensure that the no-slip condition is satisfied and that the circulation is conserved. On the ground it is only sufficient to ensure the impermeability condition. Based on the experimental results available in the literature, the critical drag behaviour was found to be directly related to a global change in the near wake structure of the cylinder. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.