Sweep Angle Effects of Flow Over an Undulated Cylinder

Trevor K. Dunt, Christin T. Murphy, Ondřej Ferčák, Raúl Bayoán Cal, Jennifer A. Franck

Published 2025-05-09Version 1

Flow over a seal whisker-inspired undulated cylinder at swept back angles is computationally investigated, comparing the vortex shedding, forces, and wake characteristics to those of an equivalent smooth geometry. Numerous prior studies have demonstrated that undulated cylinders can reduce mean drag and unsteady lift oscillations; however, none have isolated the effects of sweep resulting from whisker positioning in flow. Relevant not only to understanding seal whiskers, such findings are also useful in engineering structural applications to reduce drag and vortex-induced vibration. This investigation performs direct numerical simulation of flow across a rigid, infinite-span, undulated cylinder at sweep angles from 0 to 60{\deg} and at Reynolds numbers of 250 and 500. At zero sweep, the undulated cylinder breaks up coherent two-dimensional vortices, having the effect of reducing drag by 10.4% and root mean square lift by 91.2% compared to a smooth elliptical cylinder. With sweep added, the prominence of spanwise vortex breakup and force suppression is reduced, approximating flow over smooth ellipse geometry as sweep increases. At low sweep angles of 15 and 30 degrees, lift is still suppressed by 75.5% and 50% while drag results in a smaller difference of 7.4 and 1.9% reduction from a smooth ellipse.