A Forced System of Two Cylinders with Various Spacings

The spectrum characteristics and wake structures for a circular cylinder oscillating in a wake are investigated by use of the currently modified virtual boundary method. A forced system of two cylinders with a small spacing ( the downstream one is made to oscillate in the transverse direction) is studied and interesting flow characteristics are observed. A vortex switch and the change of vortex modes (between 2S mode and 2P mode) are observed in the “lock-in“ region. Vortex bands are formed and lost with the increasing excitation frequency. Information concerning saddle points in the flow field is obtained for different excitation frequencies. For a forced system of two cylinders with a large spacing, the upstream cylinder sheds vortexes because there is no downstream cylinder oscillating in the wake. No distinct “lock-in“ response is found for the downstream cylinder.     

Performance assessment of a concept propulsor: the thrust-balanced propeller

This paper presents the results of a numerical performance analysis to demonstrate the worthiness of a recently patented new concept propulsor, the so-called “thrust-balanced propeller (TBP)”. The main advantage of this unconventional propulsor is its inherent ability to reduce the unsteady effect of blade forces and moments when it is operating in a non-uniform wake flow. The propulsor comprises a pair of diametrically opposed blades that are connected to one another and mounted so as to be rotatable together through a limited angle about their spindle axis. A quasi-hydrodynamic approach is described and applied to perform the numerical analysis using a state-of-the-art lifting surface procedure for conventional propellers. Performance comparisons with a conventional fixed-pitch propeller are made for the blade forces and moments, efficiency, cavitation extents and fluctuating hull pressures. Bearing in mind the quasi-static nature of the analyses, the results present favourable performance characteristics for the thrust-balanced propeller and support the worthiness of the concept. However, the concept needs to be proved through physical model tests, which are planned to take in a cavitation tunnel.     

Observations and simulations of an unsteady island wake in the Firth of Forth, Scotland

Beamer Rock, a 50-m-wide island in the Firth of Forth, produces a distinctive von Kármán vortex street wake, the characteristics of which depend on the speed and direction of the tidal flow. ADCP (acoustic Doppler current profiler), CTD (conductivity–temperature–depth) and aerial photograph data were collected from the region during flood and ebb tidal flow under neap and spring conditions. Good agreement was found between the observations and the results from a fixed-grid depth-averaged numerical tidal model. The island wake parameter correctly predicted the unsteady nature of the wake, and the Strouhal number (defined in terms of flow past a circular cylinder) was found to give excellent predictions of the wake wavelength when scaled on the island width. Contrary to published results, the study shows that it is possible to accurately simulate an unsteady island wake using a relatively coarse fixed-grid numerical model.Responsible Editor: Jens Kappenberg     

采用DPIV技术研究浅水平板岛屿尾流

人们对于尾流的研究大都针对绕流体在展向非常长的情形,但是在天然环境和水利工程中出现的多为水深相对很浅的流动。由于槽底和自由水面的限制,浅水域中的尾流有着与深水尾流不同的流动规律。采用数字粒子图像测速(DPIV)技术,在长30m、宽3.5m、高1m的水槽中比较系统地量测了浅水中绕平板岛屿的尾流区流场。分析了大尺度旋涡的运动规律,得到了尾流流动形式随尾流稳定性参数的变化规律。目前如此大尺度浅水岛屿尾流的定量实验研究并不多见。     

Direct scantling assessment of propeller blades

Traditionally, propeller design has been focused on all activities necessary to obtain a propeller featuring a high efficiency, avoiding erosive cavitation for given operating conditions and having adequate structural strength. In recent years, more and more challenging requirements have been imposed, such as the reduction of radiated noise and pressures pulses, requiring more precise analyses and methods in the optimization of the propeller performance. On the other hand, the evaluation of the propeller strength still relies on simplified methods, which basically consider the blade as a cantilever beam subjected to characteristic static forces. Since the loads acting on a blade are variable in the blade revolution and in different operating conditions throughout the ship life, a procedure to account for the influence of fatigue phenomena is proposed. The fatigue assessment could reduce the safety factor in the propeller scantling rules and allow improving the quality of propeller design (e.g. obtaining higher efficiency, margin on cavitation phenomena, less noise).     

Sailboat propeller drag

All but the smallest classes of modern keelboats are fitted with inboard engines and consequently, when making way under sail, the craft experience parasitic drag due to trailing propellers and associated appendages. The variety of screw configurations used on sailing boats includes fixed-blade, feathering, and folding set-ups, with blades numbering two or three. Although the magnitude of the resultant drag is thought to have a significant influence on sailing performance, the published literature having regard to this problem is sparse. Here, the aim was to evaluate the drag effect of fixed-blade propellers of types commonly used on sailing craft. The results of towing tank tests on full-scale propellers are presented for the locked shaft condition; these are presented along with reconfigured data from the few previously published sources. For the case in which the propeller is allowed to rotate, tests were conducted on a typical screw with a range of braking torques being applied. It was hypothesised that the performance coefficients of the Wageningen B-Screw Series could be used to characterise adequately the types of screw of interest and that these could be extrapolated to enable prediction of the drag of a freewheeling propeller; an assessment of this formed part of the investigation.     

Comparison of flow patterns in the near wake of a circular cylinder and a square cylinder placed near a plane wall

The flow patterns in the near wake of a cylinder (either circular or square in shape, D=25 mm) placed in the proximity of a fully developed turbulent boundary layer (thickness δ=0.4D) are investigated experimentally using particle image velocimetry (PIV). The effects of changing the gap height (S) between the cylinder bottom and the wall surface, over the gap ratio range S/D=0.1–1.0, have been investigated. The results show that both the ensemble-averaged and instantaneous flow fields are strongly dependent on S/D. The flow patterns for the two types of cylinders share many similarities with respect to the change in S/D, such as the reduced recirculation length and increased velocity fluctuation in the near wake with increasing S/D, as well as the trend of suppression of vortex shedding at small S/D and onset of vortex shedding at large S/D. However, developments of the shear layers, in terms of wake width, flow curvature, etc., are considerably different for these two types of cylinders. In general, the wake development and momentum exchange for the square cylinder are slower those for the circular cylinder at the same gap ratio. Correspondingly, it is shown that the periodic vortex shedding is delayed and weakened in the case of square cylinder, as compared to that of the circular cylinder at the same S/D.     

The role of Coriolis in sandbank formation due to a headland/island system

Tidal flow past a headland was modelled and the resulting sandbank formation due to bedload transport by eddy systems was examined with particular emphasis on the role of Coriolis. The headland configuration was extended to the more complex case of a headland with a detached island and the role of Coriolis in sandbank formation was again examined. In the headland case, the contribution of Coriolis resulted in the expected change in bed level at the centre of the residual eddies (positive contribution for the cyclonic eddy and negative change for the anticyclonic eddy). In the headland/island case, the role of Coriolis in the resulting bed level change was a function of eddy shedding from the island, defined by the island wake parameter. When eddy shedding occurred, the inclusion of Coriolis had a large magnitude effect on creating flood/ebb sandbank asymmetry. When eddies remained attached to the island, Coriolis had a minor role in the magnitude of this asymmetry.     

Numerical Simulation on Flow Past Two Side-by-Side Inclined Circular Cylinders at Low Reynolds Number

A series of three-dimensional numerical simulations is carried out to investigate the effect of inclined angle on flow behavior behind two side-by-side inclined cylinders at low Reynolds number Re=100 and small spacing ratio T/D=1.5 (T is the center-to-center distance between two side-by-side cylinders, D is the diameter of cylinder). The instantaneous and time-averaged flow fields, force coefficients and Strouhal numbers are analyzed. Special attention is focused on the axial flow characteristics with variation of the inclined angle. The results show that the inclined angle has a significant effect on the gap flow behaviors behind two inclined cylinders. The vortex shedding behind two cylinders is suppressed with the increase of the inclined angle as well as the flip-flop gap flow. Moreover, the mean drag coefficient, root-mean-square lift coefficient and Strouhal numbers decrease monotonously with the increase of the inclined angle, which follows the independent principle at small inclined angles.     

基于激光雷达测风数据的复杂地形下风力机尾流特性研究

以张家口某处风电场为实验场地,采用两台多普勒激光雷达(Wind3D 6000和WindMast WP350)分别测量风力机的尾流和来流风速,对全尾流、半尾流和独立尾流3种工况进行研究。结果表明,3种工况下随着尾流发展尾流宽度均不断变大,而尾流深度和速度衰减则不断减小;全尾流和半尾流工况中,上游风力机的存在会增加下游风力机尾流宽度,且全尾流比半尾流的增加量大;全尾流和半尾流工况中,相较于上游风力机,下游风力机尾流深度和速度衰减均较小。