Experimental Investigation of Flow Dynamics of Chamfer on a Wall Mounted Square Cylinder

Abstract The wake characteristics of a wall mounted finite height square cylinder were studied having different chamfer dimensions. This study was performed using a non-intrusive technique called Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) in a closed loop water tunnel with turbulent intensity less than 1%. The study focused on the flow behavior with change in chamfer dimensions both upstream and downstream of the cylinder, horseshoe vortex and Von-Karman vortices etc. Different cylinders were used having variable chamfer dimension while fixing the diameter, aspect ratio (AR) for all cylinders and Reynold’s number (Re). By introduction of chamfer, it was found that chamfer dimension significantly influences the characteristics of flow around the wall mounted cylinder and upwash flow increased significantly thus affecting the vortex structures in the wake of the cylinder. Moreover, horseshoe vortex at the upstream of cylinder also reduced in size and strength by the introduction of the chamfer dimension respectively. This study reveals that wake dynamics is important for bluff body dynamics and in-depth analysis is very important for understanding the underlying physical phenomenon.