High Performance Computing of the Flow Past a Circular Cylinder at Critical and Supercritical Reynolds Numbers

AbstractIt is well known that the flow past a circular cylinder at critical Reynolds number combines flow separation, turbulence transition, reattachment of the flow and further turbulent separation of the boundary layer. In the critical regime, the transition to turbulence in the boundary layer causes the delaying of the separation point and, an important reduction of the drag force on the cylinder surface known as the Drag Crisis. In this paper advanced turbulence simulations at Reynolds numbers in the range of 1.4 × 105-8.5 × 105 will be carried out by means of large-eddy simulations. Numerical simulations using unstructured grids up to 70 million of control volumes have been performed on Marenostrum Supercomputer. One of the major outcomes is shedding some light on the shear layer instabilities mechanisms and their role on the drag crisis phenomena