Simulation of Viscous Flow around a Circular Cylinder near a Moving Ground

The objective of this paper is to study the vortex shedding from a circular cylinder near a moving ground; this is done using the Vortex Method. A moving ground has been widely used in the field of experimental vehicle aerodynamics, especially of high-performance racing cars, to properly consider the ground effect on the vehicles aerodynamic. In experimental work as well as in numerical simulations, the ground plane develops a boundary layer that interferes with the body viscous wake, leading to not so precise results. A ground moving with the incoming flow velocity, however, does not allow the development of a boundary layer. The results of our numerical simulations show that the critical drag behavior is directly related to a global change in the wake structure of the cylinder in the ground effect. Comparisons with experimental data are encouraging.