Detached-eddy simulations of a benchmark on the aerodynamics of a rectangular 5:1 cylinder

Abstract

This paper deals with the three-dimensional numerical simulation of the unsteady flow field around a stationary 5:1 rectangular cylinder at zero-degree angle of attack, low Mach number and high Reynolds number, which is the object of an international benchmark study. Simulations were performed with a finite-volume unstructured solver and detached-eddy simulation was adopted as strategy of turbulence modelling. Results showed satisfactory agreement with experimental data and other computational results from the literature. In particular, the sensitivity of the solution to the amount of artificial viscosity introduced by the discretization scheme was investigated. Attention was also devoted to the effects of the spanwise extension of the computational domain.