The flow past a cactus-inspired grooved cylinder

The star-shaped cross section of giant cylindrical cactus plants is thought to be aerodynamically favorable for protection against toppling by strong winds. Particle image velocimetry is used to investigate the flow details within the surface grooves and in the immediate wake of a cactus-inspired model cylinder with eight longitudinal grooves, at biologically relevant Reynolds numbers between 50 x 10(3) and 170 x 10(3). The wake flow is analyzed and compared to a similarly sized circular cylinder. At the lowest Re tested, the wakes from the two geometries are similar. At higher Re, the cactus wake exhibits superior behavior as seen from the mean and turbulent velocities, suggesting that the flow mechanisms are Re dependent. The flow within the surface grooves reveals counter rotating rollers, while the geometrical ridges act as vortex generators known to help with the surface flow attachment. Lastly, a simplistic analysis is described to recover, qualitatively, certain time-dependent flow features from the randomly acquired PIV realizations.