Velocity Measurements of Turbulent Wake Flow Over a Circular Cylinder

Abstract

There are two general concerns in the velocity measurements of turbulence. One is the temporal characteristics which governs the turbulent mixing process. Turbulence is rotational and is characterized by high levels of fluctuating vorticity. In order to obtain the information of vorticity dynamics, the spatial characteristics is the other concern. These varying needs can be satisfied by using a variety of diagnostic techniques such as invasive physical probes and non-invasive optical instruments. Probe techniques for the turbulent measurements are inherently simple and less expensive than optical methods. However, the presence of a physical probe may alter the flow field, and velocity measurements usually become questionable when probing recirculation zones. The non-invasive optical methods are mostly made of the foreign particles (or seeding) instead of the fluid flow and are, thus, of indirect method. The difference between the velocities of fluid and foreign particles is always an issue to be discussed particularly in the measurements of complicated turbulent flows. Velocity measurements of the turbulent wake flow over a circular cylinder will be made by using two invasive instruments, namely, a cross-type hot-wire anemometry (HWA) and a split-fiber hot-film anemometry (HFA), and a non-invasive optical instrument, namely, particle image velocimetry (PIV) in this study. Comparison results show that all three employed diagnostic techniques yield similar measurements in the mean velocity while somewhat deviated results in the root-mean-squared velocity, particularly for the PIV measurements. It is demonstrated that HFA possesses more capability than HWA in the flow measurements of wake flow. Wake width is determined in terms of either the flatness factor or This is an Open Access article published by World Scientific Publishing Company. It is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC-BY) License. Further distribution of this work is permitted, provided the original work is properly cited.