Confinement Effects on Flows Past an In-Duct Rectangular Bluff Body with Semi-Circular Leading Edge

This paper reports a numerical study of a two‐dimensional time‐dependent viscous flow past a rectangular bluff body with a Reynolds number Re = 6 073 based on bluff body height installed in a flow duct. The leading edge of the bluff body takes a semi‐circular profile. The governing equations of the flow are solved with large‐eddy simulation (LES) using a commercial computational fluid dynamics software FLUENT. The focus of the present study is to explore the effects of the ratio of the height of the bluff body H and the separation D between the bluff body and the duct wall surface. The numerical simulations are validated with the results obtained from a separate wind‐tunnel experiment. Numerical simulations with various D/H are carried out. The numerical results show that the mean and instantaneous flow quantities are strongly dependent on the ratio D/H. The suppression effects of vortex shedding by the neighboring duct wall are highlighted by comparing the unsteady flow structure topology, dominant Strou...