Numerical Study of Incompressible Flow Past a Circular Cylinder at Low Reynolds Number Using COMSOL Multiphysics

Incompressible turbulent flow past a stationary circular cylinder at Reynolds number of 10,000 was investigated using COMSOL Multiphysics in a two-dimensional simulation. At this Reynolds number, the flow pattern was in a transition from periodic to chaotic behaviour due to small eddies developing at the wall of the circular cylinder. The aim is to investigate a couple of turbulence models to predict the flow behaviour by comparing the result of vorticity patterns, drag and lift coefficients with the numerical result of previous researchers. This study employed two turbulence models, Spalart Allmaras and Menter’s Shear Stress Transport. Wall treatment and wall distance initialization options were also investigated. The SA model was able to give better result as compared to SST model when compared to standard drag coefficients values for circular object. The wall treatment was able to perform very well in determining how wall treatment should be treated, either using wall function or resolve the boundary layer with RANS depending on the maximum y+ that correlates with the mesh size on the wall of circular cylinder. The simulation with wall distance initialization turned off successfully imitates the result of previous research in terms of CD and CL curves pattern and wake pattern for the specific case of incompressible flow past a stationary circular cylinder.