Proximity Effects on Characteristics of Flow around Three Inline Square Cylinders

This work presents the numerical investigations performed to study the proximity effects on fluid flow characteristics around three inline square cylinders using the lattice Boltzmann method. For this purpose the gap spacing (g) is systematically varied in the range 0.5 to 16 diameters of cylinder by keeping Reynolds number fixed at 200. Five different flow patterns are observed at different values of spacing: bluff body flow, gap trapped flow, irregular flow, alternate shedding, and modulated shedding. These patterns have a significant effect on flow induced forces and vortex shedding frequency. The spacing value g = 2 is found to be critical due to sudden changes in fluid flow characteristics. The flow parameters of first cylinder are found to be closer to single cylinder values but for middle and third cylinder the differences confirm the wake interference effect even at large values of spacing.