Effect of Turbulent Uniform Flow past a Two-Dimensional Square Cylinder

Turbulent uniform flows past a two-dimensional square cylinder are investigated numerically. By varying the turbulence intensity and turbulence length scale of the approaching flow, the flow effect of the cylinder are compared to that in a laminar approaching-flow case. In addition, the variations of drag and lift coefficients with respect to the changes of turbulence intensity and turbulence length scale are analyzed on a systematic basis. In the large eddy simulations, the approaching-flow turbulence is generated by a spectral method according to Karman spectrum. Two levels of turbulence intensities (5% and 10%) and three turbulence length scales (0.25, 0.50 and 1.0 times of the cylinder width) are selected in the study to examine the effect on the cylinder. Results show that the Strouhal number remains almost unchanged when the uniform approaching-flow changes from a laminar state to a turbulent one. The approaching-flow turbulence has noticeable effect in promoting the resulting drag and lift fluctuations. However, its effect on the mean drag appears negligible. In contrast, an increase of the approaching-flow turbulence length scale leads to mild increases of the mean and root-mean-square values of drag. On the other hand, the resulting lift fluctuation is insensitive to the change of the turbulence length scale.