On streamwise vortices in turbulent wakes of cylinders

Abstract

Flow-visualization methods were used to explore the structure of streamwise vortices and their interactions with the von Kármán vortices in the immediate wakes of cylinders. The experiments were conducted in a water tunnel at Reynolds numbers from 330–21 000 based on cylinder diameter. Over this entire range of Reynolds number, pairs of counter-rotating streamwise vortices were observed immediately behind the cylinders, with a mean spanwise spacing of approximately one pair per diameter. The streamwise vortices significantly distorted the von Kármán vortices, but only on their upstream-facing sides. The cylinder near-surface-flow topology was found to include a secondary separation line containing ‘‘dominant-foci structures’’ whose spanwise locations correlated with those of the streamwise vortices.