Measurements are presented of the pressure fluctuations acting on a stationary squaresection cylinder, with the front face normal to the flow, and one forced to oscillate, transverse to a flow, at amplitudes up to 25% of the length of a side. The range of reduced velocities investigated, 4–13, includes the vortex lock-in regime. At lock-in the amplification of the coefficient of fluctuating lift is found to be much less than that found for a circular cylinder. The variation of the phase angle, between lift and displacement, is also different from that measured on a circular cylinder, and vortex-induced oscillations are possible only at the high-reduced-velocity end of the lock-in range. At reduced velocities sufficiently far below lock-in the natural vortex-shedding mode is suppressed and vortices are found to form over the side faces at the body frequency. Intermittent reattachment occurs over the side faces and, for an amplitude of oscillation equal to 10% of the length of a side face, the time-mean drag coefficient can be reduced to 60% of its fixed-cylinder value.

Measurements of sectional and total forces and the spanwise correlation of vortex shedding are presented for a circular cylinder in planar oscillatory flow at Keulegan-Carpenter numbers, KC, in the range from about 4 to 55. The viscous parameter β is in the range from around 100 to 1665. Circulation measurements around a circuit close to and enclosing the cylinder, are also presented. A mode-averaging technique was used for both sectional forces and circulation measurements and this gave, for typical modes of vortex shedding, time histories over an average cycle. The transverse force and the circulation tend to fluctuate in sympathy with each other, except around the instant of flow reversal when the force changes sign but the circulation remains high. Values of the strength of shed vortices, estimated from the measured circulation, are found to be comparable with steady-flow results. For KC [lsim ] 30, modes of vortex shedding occur over distinct ranges of KC with spanwise correlation high at the centre of a KC-range for a particular mode of shedding but low at the boundaries. Above KC ≈ 30 the correlation is no longer very sensitive to KC and the correlation length is estimated to be equal to 4.65 cylinder diameters. In the transverse vortex-street regime (8 [lsim ] KC [lsim ] 15) the cylinder was found to experience a steady transverse force, the coefficient of which is estimated to be about 0.5 at KC = 14.

This paper presents a comparison between theory and experiment for the in-line forces on cylinders of general cross-section in planar oscillatory flows of small amplitude. The theoretical analysis evaluates corrections to the standard inviscid inertial force at low Keulegan-Carpenter numbers which arise from the presence of viscous laminar boundary layers and from the development of vortex shedding. The boundary-layer contribution due to both skin friction and displacement effects is calculated to first order in the Stokes parameter β−½. The contribution to the in-line force from separation and vortex shedding, for which the results presented only apply to sharp-edged bodies, is taken from previous work on vortex shedding from isolated edges using the discrete vortex modelling technique. The resulting force has components both in phase with the fluid acceleration (inertia) and in phase with the velocity (drag).The theoretical results are compared to measurements taken in a [xcup ]-tube water channel on a number of cylinders of different cross-section including circular cylinders and sharp-edged sections. The comparisons suggest that the theory is valid for Keulegan–Carpenter numbers below about 3 and for moderately high values of the β parameter.

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