The separation of flow past a cylinder in a rotating system

Abstract

The flow past a cylinder bounded by parallel planes in a rotating frame is treated in terms of a nonlinear Stewartson layer. It is shown that separation is strongly dependent on the ratio of the Rossby number to the square root of the Ekman number, covering the whole range from fully attached flow to the classical non-rotating separated flow past a cylinder. The results are in agreement with published experimental observations.