3-D Numerical Modeling of Flow around a Circular Cylinder

Abstract

Incompressible, steady state flow of water around a circular cylinder is studied using Volume of Fluid method (VOF). An Open source CFD model called OpenFOAM is used for the modeling and simulation. Two different cases were investigated. Case 1 has a discharge of 0.248m3s-2 and a domain size of Length/width=4m/2m with cylinder diameter of 0.22m. Case 2 has a discharge of 3.978m3s-1 with domain size of Length/width=8m/4m and cylinder diameter of 0.80m. Three dimensional, structured, hexahedral and non-uniform meshes were used for the simulation of both cases with a slightly coarser grids for Case 2. K-OmegaSST turbulence model is used for the simulation of both cases. The simulated results of both cases are compared with the simulated results from the study of (Yulistiyanto, Zech, & Graf, 1998). The simulation results show that for case 1 the flow depths and flow fields were in agreement with the previous results. For case 2 the simulation results show a slight variation in the results. Overall the results for both cases were satisfactory and it can be concluded that OpenFOAM can be used for 3-D simulation of flows.