Abstract
This article presents an experimental exploration with numerical support of two circular cylinders tandem placed to a turbulent crossflow with L/D ratios of 5, 7.5, 10, and 12.5, where L is the axial distance between the cylinders, and D is the diameter of the cylinder. The force coefficients, flow visualization, and Strouhal numbers were obtained from the numerical simulations. The wake flow velocity and the lateral acceleration of the cylinders were acquired from the experiments. In both studies, a free flow velocity of 10 m/s was imposed, maintaining the Reynolds number in the subcritical flow range, considering the cylinder diameter. Numerical studies employed the gmsh software to generate the mesh and the OpenFOAM software to compute the results. A wind channel with a square cross-section of 1m and two circular slender cylinders were used to obtain the signals of lateral acceleration and wake flow velocity. These signals were post-processed by Matlab software using the wavelet and Fourier analyses. The main conclusions pointed out that the L/D spacing ratio of 5 was the configuration most influenced by the vortex shedding. This was observed in the experimental values of the lateral acceleration and in the numerical results of lift fluctuations. All the proposed L/D spacing ratios presented shear layer reattachment and lateral oscillation caused by the vortex shedding from the upstream cylinder.
