Near-body vorticity dynamics of a square cylinder subjected to an inline pulsatile free stream flow

In the present work, the effect of an inflow sinusoidal excitation that is superimposed over the mean flow on the vortex-shedding characteristics of a square cylinder is studied. The frequency of pulsation is varied around the natural vortex-shedding frequency, and the amplitude of pulsation is varied moderately in comparison to the cylinder diameter, at a fixed Reynolds number (=100). A flow regime map is prepared and compared with the experimental results, which are available for a circular cylinder that is subjected to inline excitation. We correlate the spectra to the corresponding flow regime. Visualization of the vorticity contours reveals that the significant interaction of the base-region vorticities with the main shear layer vorticities is important in the mechanism of formation of the several vortex-shedding modes. The strength and sign of base region vorticity with respect to the shear layers has a fundamental role to play in the mechanism of formation. It is hypothesized that the similarity in vortex-shedding modes across different excitation types, bluff body geometry, and for different parameters is due to the similarity in the underlying vorticity dynamics. Published by AIP Publishing.