A numerical simulation is performed to investigate a passive jet flow control method for suppressing the alternating vortex shedding from the circular cylinder. A hollow pipe is tightly set on the circular cylinder, and two arrangement cases for the holes are employed: one is a five-hole case, which means that five suction holes are set near the front stagnation point and five jet holes set near the rear stagnation point of the cylinder. The other is the full-hole case, which means the holes are equidistantly arranged on the hollow pipe. The incoming flow enters the suction holes and jets into the near wake from the outlet holes. Consequently, the wake vortex shedding alternately is manipulated or destroyed. The numerical simulations of baseline cases (without control) are first conducted to verify the reliability of the numerical model. Next, the two controlled cases (five hole-case and full-hole case) are investigated at the Reynolds number $\mathsf{R}={10}^3-{10}^5$ . It is found that a remarkable mitigation for the aerodynamic forces of the cylinder is revealed at the high Reynolds number: the in-line drag coefficient can be reduced by approximately 40.00%. At the same time, the cross-flow lift fluctuation has been completely suppressed with a control effectiveness of more than 98.00%. The swirling strength distributions and corresponding streamline results around the circular cylinder are then described, which are employed to present the essential physics regarding why the unsteady vortex shedding is suppressed by the passive control method. Finally, the stability of the flow field is discussed based on the linear stability theory. The absolute instability region near the cylinder shrinks substantially at the high Reynolds number, even changing into a convective instability region completely for the five-hole cases.

A preliminary study is carried out to investigate the aerodynamic characteristics of a square cylinder with Savonius wind turbines and to explain the reason why this kind of structure can suppress wind-induced vibrations. A series of computational fluid dynamics simulations are performed for the square cylinders with stationary and rotating wind turbines at the cylinder corners. The turbine orientation and the turbine rotation speed are two key factors that affect aerodynamic characteristics of the cylinder for the stationary and rotating turbine cases, respectively. The numerical simulation results show that the presence of either the stationary or rotating wind turbines has a significant effect on wind forces acting on the square cylinder. For the stationary wind turbine cases, the mean drag and fluctuating lift coefficients decrease by 37.7% and 90.7%, respectively, when the turbine orientation angle is 45°. For the rotating wind turbine cases, the mean drag and fluctuating lift coefficients decrease by 34.2% and 86.0%, respectively, when the rotation speed is 0.2 times of vortex shedding frequency. Wind turbines installed at the corners of the square cylinder not only enhance structural safety but also exploit wind energy simultaneously.

In this paper, the entire process of the flow around a fixed square cylinder and the moving surface boundary-layer control (MSBC) at a low Reynolds number was numerically simulated. Two small rotating circular cylinders were located in each of the two rear corners of the square cylinder, respectively, to transfer momentum into the near wake behind the square cylinder. The rotations of the two circular cylinders were realized via dynamic mesh technology, when the two-dimensional incompressible Navier–Stokes equations for the flow around the square cylinder were solved. We analyzed the effects of different rotation directions, wind angles $\theta$, and velocity ratios $k$ (the ratio of the tangential velocity of the rotating cylinder to the incoming flow velocity) on the wake of flow around a square cylinder to evaluate the control effectiveness of the MSBC method. In the present work, the aerodynamic forces, the pressure distributions, and the wake patterns of the square cylinder are discussed in detail. The results show that the high suction areas near the surfaces of the rotating cylinders can delay or prevent the separation of the shear layer, reduce the wake width, achieve drag reduction, and eliminate the alternating vortex shedding. For a wind angle of $0^{°}$, the inward rotation of the small circular cylinders is the optimal arrangement to manipulate the wake vortex street behind the square cylinder, and $k=2$ is the optimal velocity ratio between the control effectiveness and external energy consumption.

In the present paper, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical simulation was utilized to investigate the effectiveness of the transverse traveling wave wall (TWW) method with the expectation of inhibiting the vortex shedding from a fixed circular cylinder. We mainly focused on the variations of four kinds of wave propagation directions, five different maximum wave amplitudes and ten different wave velocities for suppressing vortices shedding and aerodynamic forces. The aerodynamic coefficients and vortex structures under different propagation directions, wave amplitudes, wave numbers and wave velocities were investigated in detail. The results demonstrate that the alternate wake behind the cylinder can be effectively eliminated resorting to the “Downstream” propagating TWW. The mean drag coefficient is positively associated with wave velocity. Drag and lift coefficients remain relatively stable at different wave amplitudes. When the velocity ratio (wave velocity divided by incoming velocity) is 1.5, the lift coefficient fluctuation decreases to the minimum. In contrast, the optimal combination of control parameters under the present Reynolds number is concluded with “Downstream” propagating direction, maximum wave amplitude ratio of 0.02, and velocity ratio of 1.5.