Power-Law Fluid Flow Around an Elliptical Cylinder in Laminar Flow Regime

Abstract

Extensive research has been done on external flow of fluids over variously shaped bodies as is evident from the extensive literature available for circular cylinder and spheres, for instance. However, much of the literature has focused only on Newtonian fluid flow, leaving non-Newtonian fluid behavior out of the picture. In daily life we encounter non-Newtonian fluids like slurries, foams, emulsions etc. Also, much of the research has focused on circular cylinders, keeping elliptical cylinder data scant. Hence, the objective of this project is to emphasize on the flow pattern of Non-Newtonian fluids across elliptical cylinders and encourage further advancement in the same. Steady-state unconfined flow over a two-dimensional elliptical cylinder (E=0.5, 2) has been investigated by using ANSYS Fluent (version 15.0) in the laminar flow regime. The influence of aspect ratio of the ellipse (E = 2, 0.5), Reynolds number (5 = Re = 40) and power-law index (0.8, 1, 1.2) on the flow phenomena like drag coefficient and pressure drag coefficient has been studied. It was found that the influence of Reynolds number and power-law index was somewhat of a complex nature on the drag and pressure drag coefficients. Steady-state unconfined flow over rotating circular cylinder has been investigated by using the Multiple Reference Frame (MRF) model using ANSYS Fluent (version 15.0) in the two dimensional laminar flow regime for Re = 10 and 40 and dimensionless rotational speed a = 2, 4 and 6. The optimum size of rotating domain found for the rotating circular cylinder problem was used to simulate an unconfined flow around rotating elliptical cylinder in the two dimensional laminar flow regime for 10 = Re = 40 and 2 = a = 6. All the data obtained for the static elliptical cylinder has been matched with their corresponding values in the literature. The new data obtained can be used for the transient simulation of the same problem by using a sliding mesh approach.