Steady incompressible flow past a row of circular cylinders

Numerical solutions are presented for steady two-dimensional incompressible flow past an infinite row of cylinders (of unit radii, with distances W between their centres). The calculations cover R [les ] 700 for 5 [les ] W [les ] ∞ and also R = 800 for 5 [les ] W [les ] 100 (where R denotes the Reynolds number based on the cylinder diameters). The recirculation regions (wake bubbles) are found to grow in length approximately linearly with R in all cases. For high values of R , a major change occurs in their character when W is increased past W crit ≈ 16. While they have remained slender up to this point (essentially only stretching in length in proportion to R ), their centres of circulation have moved towards their ends. As W is further increased, the wake bubbles widen rapidly, beginning from the rear of the wakes. In the limit of W →∞, the present results agree with the previous ones for a single cylinder as reported by Fornberg (1985).