Machine Learning Based Developing Flow Control Technique Over Circular Cylinders

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the feasibility of blowing and suction for flow control based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations at a low Reynolds number flows. The effects of blowing and suction position, and the blowing and suction mass flowrate, and on the flow control are presented in this paper. The optimal conditions for suppressing the wake of the cylinder are investigated by examining the flow separation and the near wake region; analyzing the aerodynamic force (lift and drag) fluctuations using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) to separate the effects of small-scale turbulent structures in the wake region. A method for stochastic analysis using machine learning techniques is proposed. Three different novel machine learning methods were applied to CFD results to predict the variation in drag coefficient due to the vortex shedding. Although, the prediction power of all the methods utilized is in the acceptable accuracy range, the Gaussian process regression (GPR) method is more accurate with an R2(coefficient of determination) > 0.95. The results indicate that by optimizing the blowing and suction parameters like mass flowrate, slot location, and the slot configuration, up to 20% reduction can be achieved in the drag coefficient.