Vortex oscillations around a hemisphere-cylinder body with a high fineness ratio

TL;DR

This study investigates vortex oscillations and shedding around a hemisphere-cylinder body at various angles of attack using LES and DMD, revealing how vortex dynamics influence fluctuating forces and flow regimes.

Contribution

It provides detailed analysis of vortex oscillation and shedding behaviors over a high fineness ratio body at different angles of attack, combining LES and DMD techniques.

Findings

Vortex oscillations occur over the entire range of AOAs studied.

Vortex shedding appears on the afterbody at AOAs > 20°, moving forward with increasing AOAs.

Vortex oscillation frequencies are similar to vortex shedding at lower AOAs, but diverge at higher AOAs.

Abstract

The vortex unsteadiness around a hemisphere-cylinder body at AOAs of 10 to 80 deg was studied using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD). The Reynolds number (Re) based on the cylinder diameter of the body is 22000. The results show that vortex oscillations exist over the forebody at the whole range of AOAs. The oscillation is characterized by alternate oscillations of a forebody leeward vortex pair up and down and in-phase swings from side to side. The vortex shedding can be found at the afterbody as AOAs more than 20o, and the shedding region moves forwards gradually with AOAs increasing, and accordingly the region of vortex oscillations contracts and eventually only exists near the nose as AOAs sufficiently high. The vortex oscillation and shedding all induce fluctuating side forces along the body, but the ones from vortex oscillations are larger. The frequencies of vortex oscillations are similar to the ones of vortex shedding at the AOAs of 10o-40o with St=0.085-0.12, in which the flow fields over the afterbody are dominated by vortex shedding and forebody-vortex wakes together; while at AOAs of 50o-80o, the frequencies along the body are apparently divided into two regimes in which the vortex oscillations over the forebody have the frequencies of 0.053-0.064, and the vortex shedding over the afterbody has the frequencies of 0.16-0.2. The DMD analysis shows that except the mean flows, the most energetic modes correspond to the vortex oscillation at the forebody and to the vortex shedding at the afterbody respectively, and the frequencies from DMD are identical to the ones of the side forces obtained by fast Fourier transform. The time-averaged flow fields for the vortex oscillations are symmetric, and no apparent asymmetry exists. Therefore, the vortex pair over the forebody oscillates around a symmetric mean flow field.