Hysteresis of Flow Around an Elliptic Cylinder in Critical Reynolds Number Regime

Experimental investigations of the flow around an elliptic cylinder of axis ratio 1:3 were carried out for several angles of attack in a wide range of Reynolds number. The flow characteristics were studied by measuring the fluid forces and the surface pressure. In the critical Reynolds number regime, a discontinuous change of flow state was observed. This change was accompanied by the remarkable hysteresis phenomenon. Details of this hysteresis process are described in the paper.