Joint numerical and experimental investigation of the flow around a circular cylinder at high reynolds number

A collaborative study is presented for the flow past a circular cylinder at high Reynolds number, which makes use of both experimental and numerical approaches. The case setup was designed specifically to maximize the level of comparison between experiment and simulation, incorporating a confined environment enabling simulation on a domain of moderate size and avoiding problems associated with "infinite conditions". The two principle goals of the investigation are the detailed validation of the simulation using the experiment and vice versa and the exploitation of the respective advantages of both approaches in order to provide a better understanding of the dynamics of the flow. The experiment was carried out using PIV, stereoscopic PIV and time-resolved PIV, and the simulation was performed using detached eddy simulation (DES), a hybrid method for turbulence treatment. A very good agreement between the simulation and the experiment is achieved for the steady mean motion, the coherent motion and the turbulence quantities. In the analysis, the experiment and simulation are shown to be complementary and to allow a more complete description of the flow studied.