On drag, Strouhal number and vortex-street structure

A phenomenological model for the vortex-shedding process behind bluff cylindrical bodies is proposed. Relationships between Strouhal frequency St, drag coefficient c(D), Reynolds number Re and geometric wake parameters are obtained from mass conservation, momentum conservation in the transverse direction and energy considerations. For the first time, Roshko's (Technical Report TN 3169, NACA, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1954) experimental discovery of vortex-street similarity behind different cylinders is analytically derived. In addition, the empirically obtained Strouhal-frequency laws of Roshko (Technical Report TN1191, NACA, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1954) and Fey (Phys. fluids A 10 (1998) 1547) are also reproduced. Measurements of St and CD including their Re dependency for flows around cylinders with circular, square, triangular, semi-circular and other cross sections agree favorably with the proposed model. (C) 2002 Published by The Japan Society of Fluid Mechanics and Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.