Kármán Street-Boundary Layer Interactions In Turbulent Flow

Understanding the intricate interplay between turbulent boundary layers and wake structures caused by obstacles in the flow is key to assessing the local shear stress fields as well as the drag. These types of flows can be relevant to natural phenomena including sediment and nutrient transport. While existing literature predominantly explores the flow downstream of cylinders mounted perpendicular to bounding surfaces or downstream of cylinders positioned outside the boundary layer region, this work experimentally studies the turbulent boundary layer passing over a cylindrical obstacle positioned near and parallel to the surface of an underlying solid wall. Planar particle image velocimetry (PIV) was performed in an open recirculating water channel for three test cases at a friction Reynolds number Reτ = 1320. Key parameters investigated include the cylinder diameter relative to the boundary layer thickness (D/δ = 0.09 and 0.01) and the gap between the cylinder and the wall (G/δ = 0.09), where the range of D/δ used is smaller than most examples found in the literature. Instantaneous and averaged velocity and vorticity fields are examined based on the PIV measurements. The results in Fig. 1 show how von Kármán vortex streets and turbulent boundary layer structures interact to form unique flow features. The larger cylinder generates a clear separation downstream of its axis as well as a wake that remains coherent over a distance δ downstream. The smaller cylinder with D/δ = 0.01 generates a much narrower and weaker wake, but still shows a clear influence on time-averaged velocity profile. Future experiments will evaluate flow conditions further downstream as well as additional values of G/δ for the same D/δ values.