Flow around a rotating, semi-infinite cylinder in an axial stream

S Derebail Muralidhar (1) , B Pier (1) , Julian F. Scott (1) , R Govindarajan (2)

1 LMFA - Laboratoire de Mecanique des Fluides et d'Acoustique
2 TCIS - TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences [Hyderabad]

This paper concerns steady, high-Reynolds-number flow around a semi-infinite, rotating cylinder placed in an axial stream and uses boundary-layer type of equations which apply even when the boundary-layer thickness is comparable to the cylinder radius, as indeed it is at large enough downstream distances. At large rotation rates, it is found that a wall jet appears over a certain range of downstream locations. This jet strengthens with increasing rotation, but first strengthens then weakens as downstream distance increases, eventually disappearing, so the flow recovers a profile qualitatively similar to a classical boundary layer. The asymptotic solution at large streamwise distances is obtained as an expansion in inverse powers of the logarithm of the distance. It is found that the asymptotic radial and axial velocity components are the same as for a non-rotating cylinder, to all orders in this expansion.

Mots clés: rotating body; wall jet; boundary layer; asymptotic analysis

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

S Derebail Muralidhar, B Pier, Julian F. Scott, R Govindarajan. Flow around a rotating, semi-infinite cylinder in an axial stream. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and physical sciences, 2016, 472, pp.20150850. ⟨10.1098/rspa.2015.0850⟩. ⟨hal-01330462⟩