URANS Calculations for Smooth Circular Cylinder Flow in a Wide Range of Reynolds Numbers: Solution Verification and Validation

The flow around circular smooth fixed cylinder in a large range of Reynolds numbers is considered in this paper. In order to investigate this canonical case, we perform CFD calculations and apply Verification & Validation (V&V) procedures to draw some conclusions regarding numerical error, and afterwards, assess the modelling errors and capabilities of URANS method to solve this problem. Eight Reynolds numbers between Re = 10 and Re = 5×10⁵ will be presented with five geometrically similar grids and five time steps for each case, together with strict control of iterative and round-off errors, allowing a consistent verification analysis with uncertainty estimation. In these calculations, two-dimensional Unsteady RANS calculations were performed making use of the k–ω SST turbulence model. The Validation procedure is performed by comparing the numerical results with an extensive set of experimental results compiled from the literature and also made available in the VIV Data Repository website (http://oe.mit.edu/VIV/).