An Experimental Study of the Flow Downstream of a Circular and Tapered Cylinder

Abstract

The flow downstream of the intersection of both a circular and a tapered cylinder with a flat plate was examined at ReD = 1.3 × 105 using surface visualization, five-hole-probe anemometry, and flow visualization. A pair of large, counter-rotating swirls with common flow away from the wall and with centers over one diameter away from the wall was present downstream of both obstacles. It is suggested that the large, swirling pair are formed in the near wake of an obstacle that is exposed to symmetrical channel flow. A pair of smaller counter-rotating vortices with common flow toward the wall was observed embedded in the wall-shear flow eight diameters downstream of the tapered cylinder. This implies that the legs of the horseshoe vortex system only propagate downstream behind the streamlined obstacle shape.