Investigating the flow seperation due to grooves over a cylindrical shape

Cylindrical objects are widely used in many engineering applications, especially in aerospace and aircraft engineering. In the present study, in an attempt to reduce the aerodynamic drag of a flow over a cylindrical shape, three cases of groove size were analyzed. For every case, the angular position of the groove was changed four times. The grooves were square-shaped and taken 5%, 10% and %15 of the cylinder diameters; while the angular positions were taken 30°, 45°, 60° and 75° relative to the forward stagnation point. The analysis was made numerically using finite volume method based on commercial code Ansys-Fluent. Bare (without grooves) circular cylinder was analyzed for the sake of validation at Re:10000. In order to perform a quantitative analysis, the drag coefficient, the RMS of lift coefficient and the Strouhal number were computed. Reynolds number was kept at 10000. Large Eddy Simulation (LES) method was applied for turbulence modelling. In the conclusion, it was found that two square grooves reduce the drag coefficient over cylinder.