Numerical simulation of the flow around an infinitely long circular cylinder in the transition regime. (Q5955351)

A Newtonian, incompressible, and time-dependent with constant properties flow around an infinitely long circular cylinder is analyzed at Reynolds number between 190 and 330. The flow is considered to be homogeneous in the spanwise direction; periodic boundary conditions are applied and Fourier expansions are employed in order to describe the velocity field and pressure in this direction. With this approximation, the Navier-Stokes system is time-discretized by means of some three-step splitting schemes. Each two-dimensional spatial domain is partitioned into spectral elements. A grid refinement by increasing the order of polynomial basis is carried out. A lot of numerical results are displayed. They are compared with previous numerical reports. However, it seems that the numerical results supplied by the authors lead to a better understanding of the physics of a viscous flow around a circular cylinder in transition regime.