Viscous Free-Surface Flow Past Twin Vertical Cylinders Available to Purchase

The laminar flow behaviors around two vertical circular cylinders (in a tandem arrangement) that pierce a free surface are investigated by the finite element method in this paper. The computational results exhibit two major free-surface effects: the presence of a free surface allows the occurrence of small-scale Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, but suppresses the onset of large-scale vortex alternating behavior. It is also found that the vorticity will expand in a necklace shape adjacent to the free surface. The second cylinder may experience a persisting suction force due to “trapped” vortices in the gap between the two cylinders, which may not happen in the absence of a free surface.