The Interaction of Porous Metal Coating With the Near Wake of Bluff Body

The flow around a circular cylinder with porous metal coating (PMC) is numerically investigated based on an approach of unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) at subcritical Reynolds number. The model validation is carried out through comparison with some available experimental results in the literatures. It is found that the simulated results in the present work coincide well with the experimental data. The interaction of PMC with the near wake of circular cylinder such as streamline, vorticity and shear stress are studied in detail. The result reveals that PMC has capability of manipulating the wake flow so that the near wake of PMC cylinder is substantially different from that of smooth one. In addition, the fluctuations of aerodynamic forces are mitigated effectively. Varying the thickness of porous metal coating causes various velocity distributions and aerodynamic performance of bluff body. When the thickness is appropriate, the drag forces can be reduced to a certain extent. It is expected that the modification of flow characteristic and aerodynamic forces also produces the suppression of flow-induced noise generated by bluff body. These studies on wake flow and analysis of its relationship to flow-induced noise will be useful to understand the mechanism of controlling bluff body flow-induced noise by using PMC and to optimize the PMC for controlling flow and flow-induced noise.