An Experimental Investigation of the Separation Points on a Circular Rotating Cylinder in Cross Flow

Abstract

The flow past a rotating cylinder placed within a uniform stream is investigated at Reynolds numbers ranging from 8500 to 17,000 to 34,000. The dimensionless rotation rate α (ratio of the cylinder peripheral speed to the free-stream velocity) varies from 0 to 7. The experimental investigation is based on laser-Doppler anemometry measurements and particle-image velocimetry (PIV) within a water channel. The analysis of the experimental results mainly concerns the location of the separation points as defined by various criteria. It is found that the criterion suggested by Moore, Rott and Sears (MRS) is met in the case of the downstream-moving walls. Moreover, this study shows that sufficient information was obtained to confirm that the MRS criterion is still valid even in the case of the upstream-moving walls. This is confirmed by the behavior of the vertical velocity component educed from the averaged two-dimensional flow field obtained by PIV measurements.