[ozzythewise]

Hi all,

I'm just learning CFD and I created a simulation of laminar flow around a cylinder at a Reynolds number of 200 and I was looking to try and find some way to verify it. Does anyone know of a good resource that deals with laminar flow around a cylinder that I could compare to and see if my results are accurate?

Thanks

[agd]

If you google flow over a cylinder you'll find a whole host of data and tutorials, since flow over a cylinder is a fairly standard test case. At least two of the google citations on the the first page contain results at a Re=150 along with references, which should get you on your way. There is also a list of references on the CFD-Wiki page for flow over a cylinder.

[ozzythewise]

thanks for this. Do you know of any typical things that I could compare my results to in order to verify that they are correct? So far I've compared my Strouhal number and my drag coefficient (which both seem fine). Is there any typical criteria that is used in order to say that a simulation is accurate?

Thanks a bunch!

[agd]

You can also look at the boundary layer profile and the separation point, although the most common parameters for comparison are the lift and drag coefficients and the Strouhal number. Any decent fluid mechanics book dealing with external flow should have information on the boundary layer and separation characteristics of a cylinder in crossflow. Schlichting's book also provides a detailed stagnation point solution that can be used if you want to get into the nitty-gritty details of the flow in the neighborhood of the attachment point on the front of the cylinder. Finally, the rate at which the vorticity decays as the eddies move downstream can be a useful measure of how dissipative your algorithm is in a qualitative sense. Most 2nd-order schemes generally see the vortices dissipate quite rapidly. Searching for papers dealing with higher-order algorithms may yield some data for comparison if you are interested.