The effect of serrated fins on the flow around a circular cylinder

An experimental study is performed to investigate the characteristics of near wake flow behind a circular cylinder with serrated fins using a constant temperature anemometer and flow visualization. Various vortex shedding modes are observed. Fin height and pitch are closely related to the vortex shedding frequency after a certain transient Reynolds number. The through-velocity across the fins decreases with increasing fin height and decreasing fin pitch. Vortex shedding is affected strongly by the velocity distribution just on top of the finned tube. The weaker gradient of velocity distribution is shown as increasing the freestream velocity and the fin height, while decreasing the fin pitch. The weaker velocity gradient delays the entrainment flow and weakens its strength. As a result of this phenomenon, vortex shedding is decreased. The effective diameter is defined as a virtual circular cylinder diameter taking into account the volume of fins, while the hydraulic diameter is proposed to cover the effect of friction by the fin surfaces. The Strouhal number based upon the effective diameters seems to correlate well with that of a circular cylinder without fins. After a certain transient Reynolds number, the trend of the Strouhal number can be estimated by checking the ratio of effective diameter to inner diameter. The normalized velocity and turbulent intensity distributions with the hydraulic diameter exhibit the best correlation with the circular cylinder’s data.