Numerical simulation of flow around a circular cylinder: comparison of LES and URANS turbulence models

Knowledge of the flow around circular cylinders is important in many engineering applications, such as sport and ocean engineering. CFD can be a very useful tool to investigate the complex flow around cylinders. For this application, several CFD studies have been performed and the performance of different turbulence models has been evaluated. However, the conclusions on which turbulence models perform best are not always consistent. This paper presents a systematic evaluation of the performance of different turbulence models for this application. Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) and Large-Eddy Simulations (LES) CFD simulations are performed for the flow around an infinite circular cylinder for two cases: (i) 2D and (ii) 2.5D domains. The evaluation is based on grid-sensitivity analysis and on validation with wind tunnel measurements for two Reynolds numbers: (i) 3,900 and (ii) 140,000.status: publishe