Sanjay Kumar
George Laughlin
Department of Engineering
The University of Texas at Brownsville

It is well known that flow exhibits unsteady periodic behavior when flowing over bluff bodies such as a circular cylinder. The unsteadiness is observed above a certain critical flow speed in the form of periodic vortex shedding pattern known as Karman Vortex Street. The image shows the Karman Vortex street behind a 6.35 mm diameter circular cylinder in water at Reynolds number of 168. The visualization was done using hydrogen bubble technique. The image was taken to test the flow visualization set-up on more complex problem of the effect of spin on the Karman Vortex Street which has been experimentally investigated by the authors and the work has been submitted to the Physics of Fluids journal.

NSF GRANT # CMMI 0723094 provided equipment support for a Particle-Image-Velocimetry system used in the research related to the work on flow around a spinning cylinder.

References

The image has not been published anywhere but the research related to the image has been submitted to Physics of Fluids.
S.Kumar, C.Cantu, and B.Gonzalez, "An Experimental Study of Flow around a spinning cylinder" Physics of Fluids (submitted).

Reporters and Editors

Reporters can freely use this image. Credit: Sanjay Kumar and George Laughlin; Department of Engineering, The University of Texas at Brownsville.