Direct numerical simulation of turbulent wakes: flow past a sphere at Re=5000

Abstract

The flow around bluff bodies is of great interest for a large number of engineering applications such as vehicle aerodynamics, cooling devices using forced convection, heat transfer enhancement using droplets, among others. Although the large number of experimental and numerical studies carried out for the flow past a sphere, there is still lack of detailed information about turbulent statistics in the wake of the sphere. Furthermore, most of the experimental studies consider that the sphere is supported by a stick by its rear side and aligned with the streamwise flow. The objectives of the present work are twofold: i) to carry out the DNS of the flow past a sphere at Re = 5000 in order to investigate the characteristics of turbulent flow in the wake of the sphere and provide detailed results of the first and second order turbulent statistics and, ii) to study the influence of the supporting mechanism in the wake con guration as in the turbulence statistics.