On the Effects of Turbulence Modeling on the Fluid-Structure Interaction of a Rigid Cylinder

The cylinder flow is a canonical problem for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), as it can display several of the most relevant issues for a wide class of flows, such as boundary layer separation, vortex shedding, flow instabilities, laminar-turbulent transition and others. Several applications also display these features justifying the amount of energy invested in studying this problem in a wide range of Reynolds numbers. The Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (URANS) equations combined with simplifying assumptions for turbulence have been shown inappropriate for the captive cylinder flow in an important range of Reynolds numbers. For that reason, recent improvements in turbulence modeling has been one of the most important lines of research within that issue, aiming at better prediction of flow and loads, mainly targeting the three-dimensional effects and laminar-turbulent transition, which are so important for blunt bodies. In contrast, a much smaller amount of work is observed concerning the investigation of turbulent effects when the cylinder moves with driven or free motions. Evidently, larger understanding of the contribution of turbulence in those situations can lead to more precise mathematical and numerical modeling of the flow around a moving cylinder. In this paper, we present CFD calculations in a range of moderate Reynolds numbers with different turbulence models and considering a cylinder in captive condition, in driven and in free motions. The results corroborate an intuitive notion that the inertial effects indeed play very important role in determining loads and motions. The flow also seems to adapt to the motions in such a way that vortices are more correlated and less influenced by turbulence effects. Due to good comparison of the numerical and experimental results for the moving-cylinder cases, it is observed that the choice of turbulence model for driven and free motions calculations is markedly less decisive than for the captive cylinder case.