Comparison of Pressure-based and Skin Friction-based Methods for the Determination of Flow Separation of a Circular Cylinder with Roundness Imperfection

Introduction: A delayed detached eddy simulation in Open FOAM was performed to study flow separation of a circular cylinder with roundness imperfection up to 4% of its diameter at Reynolds numbers of 100, 3900, and 10⁴ in normal flow. Methods: The flow was considered to be Newtonian and incompressible. The separation position was determined independently based on surface pressure distribution and skin friction. Results: Results show that the patterns of these distributions depend on both Reynolds number and roundness imperfection level, and flow separation in an imperfectly round cylinder may be induced by either an adverse pressure gradient or a Gentle Bend (GB) introduced by the roughness. For the separation point determined by the pressure-based method, its accuracy can be affected by the characteristic of pressure distribution near the separation point at low Reynolds numbers, and, thus, its physical validity needs to be verified by flow visualization at high Reynolds numbers. Conclusion: The skin friction-based method can accurately predict separation point for both perfectly and imperfectly round cylinders without additional information. When the roundness imperfection ratio reaches 2% and the Reynolds number reaches 3900, both approaches indicate that the flow separation point converges to the location of GB on the cylinder surface and the two sets of predicted separation points agree well.