On a translating and transversely oscillating cylinder. Part 1—The effect of the strouhal number on the hydrodynamic forces and the near-wake structure

The problem of unsteady, laminar flow past a circular cylinder which starts translating and oscillating impulsively from rest in a viscous fluid is numerically investigated at a Reynolds number of R = 10³. The flow is incompressible and two-dimensional, and the cylinder oscillations are harmonic. The transverse oscillations are only allowed when the maximum oscillatory-to-translational velocity ratio is 0.5. The investigation is based on an implicit finite difference scheme for integrating the unsteady Navier-Stokes equations together with the mass-conservation equation in their vorticity stream function formulation. A non-inertial coordinate transformation is used so that the grid mesh remains fixed relative to the accelerating cylinder. Present calculations are performed within the range of sufficiently large oscillation amplitude to induce separation. The time variation of the in-line and transverse force coefficients are presented. The study also focuses on the laminar asymmetric flow structure in the near-wake region. In this flow regime, it is found that there is alternate shedding of vortices from either side of the cylinder over an oscillation cycle (as predicted experimentally); this is the classical mode of vortex shedding leading to formation of the Kármán street.