NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE FLOW AROUND A RECTANGULAR CYLINDER NEAR A SOLID WALL

bounded flow. In this work numerical simulations of the flow around a cylinder of rectangular cross section placed at different elevation above a solid wall are performed. This configuration could be used to study many engineering problems (e.g. pipelines near the sea bottom, river structures, etc.). The numerical analysis of the flow around bluff bodies has gained popularity in the last decades due to the rapid advance of the computer technology and accuracy of CFD prediction. In literature there are many examples of this kind of studies, notwithstanding the rectangular shape has been mainly considered for unbounded or symmetrically bounded flow ([5] [6]). Recent studies on asymmetrical confined flow are performed at the Politecnico di Milano. Malavasi and Guadagnini [1] dealt with the interaction between a free-surface flow and a rectangular cylinder, which is investigated by means of mean hydrodynamic coefficients and vortex shedding frequencies, besides Blois and Malavasi [3] investigated the flow field structures involved in the same experimental configuration with a PIV technique. Moreover, Cigada et al. [2] studied the effect that the presence of a wall induces on the fluid dynamic loading affecting a rectangula