Study of Flow Over Dimpled Cylinder For Drag Reduction

May 24, 2016 13:32 Bio-Inspired Surfaces and Applications 9in x 6in b2378-ch08 page 271
Chapter 8
Study of Flow over Dimpled Cylinder

for Drag Reduction
Bio-Inspired Surfaces and Applications Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com
Tan S.P.,∗ Koh J.H. and Ng Y.K. Eddie

by MONASH UNIVERSITY on 09/26/16. For personal use only.
School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang

Technological University,
50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798
∗ shupeitan91@gmail.com
Drag reduction of flow over a circular cylinder is done by having a

dimpled surface. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are
done to investigate the degree of drag reduction by dimpled cylinder
as compared to smooth cylinder, and the results are to be validated by
wind tunnel experimentations.
The simulations were conducted for Reynolds number (Re) ranging
from 20,000 to 160,000, which corresponds to the critical Re range
of a golf ball. The aerodynamics coefficients such as drag coefficient
and pressure coefficient were compared between both dimpled and
smooth cylinders and the results showed effective drag reduction by an
average of 9.16%. On the other hand, experimentations were carried
out for Re 60,000 to 140,000 due to wind speed limitations, and the
differences were significant as compared to the simulation results. These
were mainly due to the interference of flow during the experiment and
the inaccuracies of the CFD model. Nonetheless, drag reduction was
also achieved through wind tunnel experimentations where an average
value of 8.39% was recorded.
271
272 Bio-Inspired Surfaces and Applications
8.1. Introduction
Over the years, there have been many attempts made in rationalizing
the definitions and terminology behind drag. Total drag is the force
corresponding to the rate of decrease in momentum. It is unfavourable
as it causes structural vibrations, and hence it is extremely detrimental
to many engineering structures. Therefore, drag reduction is of par-
ticular interest to many industries as it leads to higher durability of
equipment.1−5
Drag reduction is done through extensive research on controlling
the fluid flow over bluff bodies. It can be achieved through two
main approaches: passive and active flow controls. Passive flow control
relies on the structural components of the bodies such as dimples and
riblets,3−5 and active flow control makes use of additional installation of
devices to direct wake flow structures such as an upstream installation
of a small control rod.
The focus of this chapter is to investigate the effects of dimples
on the surface of a circular cylinder. It is to induce transition and thus
create a turbulent boundary layer to delay the point of separation in
order to reduce drag.
8.2. Flow over a Circular Cylinder
Due to the viscosity of real fluid, a thin layer called the boundary
layer will form. When the upstream flow reaches the leading edge of
a flat surface, fluid starts to slow down and a laminar boundary layer
is created. However, the fluid climbs up over smooth rounded surface
of the cylinder due to favorable pressure gradient and may accelerate
if it is a suction surface. Due to the no-slip condition imposed by
the viscosity of fluid, the fluid slows down as it moves downstream.
Hence, the boundary layer begins to grow. As the laminar boundary
layer continues to grow, it will become unstable and transition to a
turbulent boundary layer. Turbulent flow is highly irregular and eddies
occur. When a viscous fluid flows over a cylinder, there will be vortices
in a thin boundary layer adjacent to the cylinder where occurrence
of boundary layer separation and a trailing wake will form eventually
behind the cylinder.1,2
Study of Flow over Dimpled Cylinder for Drag Reduction 273

Fig. 8.1. Flow comparison between laminar and turbulent boundary layer.6
Separation of flow from the surface will occur, which is the result of
a rising external pressure along the surface (adverse pressure gradient)
that resists the flow. In order to oppose this rising pressure, the fluid
particles lose their kinetic energy. Separation of flow is able to occur
for both laminar and turbulent boundary layers. However, for the
turbulent boundary layer, the greater momentum transfer due to eddies
will be able to raise the velocity near the surface. Therefore, it has more
kinetic energy to oppose the adverse pressure gradient. With this, the
point of separation is delayed (refer to Fig. 8.1 for laminar and turbulent
flow comparison), and hence drag is reduced.6
Therefore, some methods of drag reduction are to induce the
transition to turbulent boundary layer. In this chapter, having dimples
on a circular cylinder produces turbulence in the slow-moving air, and
the more energetic layer separates much later, thus leading to a smaller
wake and drag. This method was inspired by the case of golf balls, where
further distance is achieved, encouraging the incorporation of dimples
on circular cylinders.

Fig. 8.2. Variation of CD with Re (2-D circular cylinder).7
Drag is usually characterized by its own dimensionless coefficient,

CD , which is a function of the Reynolds number (Re); their relationship
(based on experimental data) is shown in Fig. 8.2. From the figure,
it can be observed that CD is very large when Re is less than 100.
However, it decreases monotonically until Re ≈ 3 × 105 . From this Re
onwards, there is significant drop of CD from about 1 to 0.3 and then
recovery to 0.6 for Re = 107 . This is due to the sudden transition from
laminar to turbulent boundary layer.
However, the drag coefficient, CD , does not depend only on Re.
The surface roughness of the cylinder may affect it as well. This is
because the drag force is made up of two major components: pressure
drag and skin friction drag. As shown in Fig. 8.3, for a smooth cylinder,
the transition occurs at Re ≈ 5 × 105 , whereas for a rough cylinder, the
transition occurs at a lower Re of around 105 .
Vortex shedding can be observed at Re of around 105 where
the flow has become unstable and the vortices will be alternately
be shed from the body and flow downstream. It becomes turbulent
and transform into a distinct wake with the laminar boundary layer
separating from the surface.
There have been many methods to investigate drag reduction. In
this chapter, drag reduction of a dimpled cylinder is observed by means
of wind tunnel experimentations and CFD simulations.

Fig. 8.3. Comparison of CD between smooth and rough cylinders.7
8.3. Experimental Method

The smooth and dimpled cylinders to be used in this study were
250 mm in length, with diameter of 50 mm. The dimples were arranged
in 29 rows and each dimple was 5 mm apart in each row. The rows were
alternated by 15 degrees from the previous row. The dimple array will
give a dimple density of 1.392 dimples per mm of the length of cylinder.
The dimple diameter was set to 6 mm. The depth of the dimples was
set to 1 mm, thus the dimple depth-to-dimple diameter ratio was 0.17,
which was between 0.15 to 0.35.8 These dimples were then machined
through use of a computer numerical controlled milling machine.
The cylinders were then further modified to incorporate the use of
a pressure transducer to record the pressure readings on the surface
of the cylinders. These pressure readings were converted to their own
dimensionless parameter, pressure coefficient CP . The modification of
the cylinders involved milling and drilling operations. Material 30 mm
in diameter and 80 mm in depth was removed to allow the installation of
pressure tappings from both sides of the cylinders. Figure 8.4 illustrates
the changes.
Next, the cylinders were drilled with holes as pressure tappings
on the surfaces. There were two pressure tappings on the smooth
Fig. 8.4. Original and modified cylinder.

Fig. 8.5. Pressure tappings on smooth cylinder.
cylinder, one on each side, and they were aligned along the length
of the cylinder, as shown in Fig. 8.5. On the other hand, there were
four pressure tappings on the dimpled cylinder, two on each side (one
will be inside a dimple, another outside a dimple) and aligned along
the length, as shown in Fig. 8.6. The extra two tappings as compared
to the smooth cylinder were used to investigate if there are pressure
differences inside a dimple and outside a dimple. Due to this drilling
operation, imperfections such as scratches and chafing were left on the
surfaces, affecting the relative surface roughness, which may lead to
higher drag force acting on the cylinder.
The tappings were connected to the thin-walled stainless steel pipe
of 20 mm in length and to the pressure transducer via flexible tubes as
shown in Fig. 8.7.
The pressure transducer which was used to measure the pressure
readings around the cylinder’s surface was with a digital indicator as

Fig. 8.6. Pressure tappings on dimpled cylinder.
Fig. 8.7. Thin-walled pipe and flexible tube.
shown in Fig. 8.8. The model is Flotech Setra 230 with a pressure
range of ±17,000 Pa.
The wind tunnel experiment was carried out in the Nanyang
Technological University (NTU) closed loop wind tunnel facility. It
is the AF6407 Wind Tunnel with a test section 720 mm height ×
2000 mm length × 780 mm width. The wind tunnel experimentation
set up is shown in Fig. 8.9. The wind tunnel is able to provide an air

Fig. 8.8. Pressure transducer and digital indicator.
Fig. 8.9. Wind tunnel experimentation set up.
velocity range from 3 ms−1 to 90 ms−1 , with a turbulence intensity of

approximately 0.1 %.
The cylinder was mounted on the force sensor using an additional
attachment piece. A level gauge was used to make sure that the cylinders
were leveled horizontally, and a force sensor was used to record the drag
force. This arrangement is shown in Fig. 8.10.
Both the experiments and simulations were originally planned for
Re of 20,000 to 160,000 to capture the critical region of extreme drag
reduction shown in Fig. 8.2. However, results for Re below 60,000
were ignored due to the limitations of the force sensor in measuring
smaller forces. Also, due to limitation of the wind speed provided by
the wind tunnel, cases with Re of 160,000 were also not conducted.

Fig. 8.10. Mounting of cylinder with the help of level gauge.
Table 8.1. Experimental CD vs Re Results for Both Cylin-

ders.
Re Smooth cylinder Dimpled cylinder % Difference
60,000 0.955 0.896 6.58

80,000 0.951 0.869 9.44
100,000 0.945 0.863 9.50
120,000 0.938 0.855 9.71
140,000 0.934 0.875 6.74
Therefore, the experiments were only carried out with Re range of

60,000 to 140,000 in intervals of 20,000.
For both smooth and dimpled cylinders, the drag forces were
compiled and represented by CD as tabulated in Table 8.1.
From the experimental results, drag reduction was observed with
the dimpled cylinder as compared to its smooth counterpart, as shown
in Fig. 8.11. The drag reduction in this experiment is an average
of 8.39%.
In this experiment, the authors are also interested in observing the
possibility of a critical region where the drag dips drastically. From the
comparison of CD vs Re results of the smooth and dimpled cylinders,
it shows a seemingly lowest CD value at around Re 120,000 before
increasing at Re of 140,000.
The CD results of the dimpled cylinder were compared to a
study done by Bearman and Harvey9 — their critical region is much

Fig. 8.11. Comparison of experimental CD vs Re results for smooth and dimpled

cylinders.
Fig. 8.12. Comparison of CD for dimpled cylinder with Bearman and Harvey.8
more significant and it occurs at around Re 100,000, as shown

in Fig. 8.12.
The comparison made with Bearman and Harvey9 shows that the
current experiment setup is unable to replicate the drop in CD at around
Re of 100,000. This may be due to several factors. First, cylinder
parameters such as surface roughness and dimple density were different.

The authors’ dimple density was lower than that in the experiment
conducted by Bearman and Harvey, which had a dimple density of
1.81 dimples per mm. Second, the experiment setups of both studies are
different, and the authors’ experimental set-up was not isolated enough
due to the presence of the mounting system and other apparatus.
Therefore, it is deduced that the critical region of the cylinder has not
occurred in the study, and it is likely to be delayed to Re > 140,000.
As for the analysis of the pressure readings, they were compiled and
calculated into their respective pressure coefficients, CP . The pressure
readings were taken from 0◦ to 180◦ with an interval of 15◦ . For the
smooth cylinder, two readings were taken for each angle and averaged.
For the dimpled cylinder, two readings were taken from inside the
dimples and two from outside the dimples. The CP is then plotted
against the angle θ (for the case of Re 60,000) as presented in Fig. 8.13.
From the graph, it can be noticed that the curve corresponding
to the smooth cylinder is rather far away from the theoretical curve
calculated using potential flow theory. On the other hand, both inside
and outside dimple curves do not differ much from each other and
have a lower-pressure region between 45◦ and 120◦ . This shows that
Fig. 8.13. Experimental CP against θ for Re of 60,000.

the dimple cylinder is capable of reducing drag when compared with

the smooth cylinder. The graphs for the other Re have shown similar
trends as compared to Re of 60,000 and will be included with the
simulated pressure results later.
8.4. Simulation Method
Three-Dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations

were done using ANSYS Workbench 14.5.7 (FLUENT) and the CD

results were extracted. All the model geometries were done in Design-
Modeler found within the Workbench instead of SolidWorks to prevent

any geometrical errors in the importing process. The size of the fluid
domain takes in the exact dimensions of the wind tunnel test section.
The cylinder was placed at 750 mm (15D; D refers to the diameter
of the cylinder) from the inlet boundary and 1250 mm (25D) from the
outlet boundary, as shown in Fig. 8.14. The inlet was set as velocity-in,
the outlet was set as pressure-out, and the rest as no-slip walls.
As the ANSYS Workbench available in the NTU Computer-Aided
Engineering (CAE) Laboratory is an educational version, the total
number of elements is restricted to 512,000. For the smooth cylinder,
a quadrilateral structured mesh was used and the number of elements
used was 472,740. However, due to the complex geometry of the
dimpled cylinder, a fully structured mesh was not achievable. Hence,
a hybrid mesh was used where tetrahedral elements were used near
the surface of the dimples and quadrilateral structured mesh was used
for the remaining domain. The number of elements was 508,866. The
meshes of both cylinders are included in Fig. 8.15.
There are many different approaches available to solve turbulence
problems computationally and these are normally selected based on the
problem application and computation resources available. For turbu-
lence modelling, there are three main approaches: Direct Numerical
Simulation (DNS), Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Reynolds Aver-
aged Navier–Stokes Simulation (RANS). Even though the accuracy of
results using DNS and LES increased due to the higher mesh density, for
the practicality of this study, RANS is used. However, the limitation of
the RANS is that this approach solves the time-averaged Navier–Stokes
equations, thus giving the time-averaged velocity contours instead of

Fig. 8.14. Geometry setup of the CFD simulation.
Fig. 8.15. Meshes of smooth (left) and dimpled cylinders.
the instantaneous ones. This may cause the vortex shedding to be less
observable.
Under the RANS turbulence modeling, there are many models to
choose from in FLUENT. In industrial CFD, the two most widely used
models are k-epsilon (k-ε) and k-omega (k-ω) models.
According to Jasmina et al,10 the k-ε turbulence model has proven

to be unsuitable for flows with curved surfaces and with boundary
layer separation. The k-ε model used often in flow simulation has been
shown to poorly represent flow behavior in highly curved regions.11
On the other hand, the k-ω models are better for flows with adverse
pressure gradient and the Shear Stress Transport (SST) turbulence
models showed good agreement for both smooth and dimpled surfaces.
Hence, in this simulation, the SST k-ω model is used.
The Pressure-Based Solver (PBS) and the Pressure-Implicit with

Splitting of Operators (PISO) scheme were selected as the method of
solving. The PISO scheme is used for transient flow problems, which is
applicable in this simulation. The discretization schemes are of second
order as they provide better accuracy than first order ones. However,
when the PISO scheme was selected for the dimpled cylinder simu-
lation, numerous errors were detected and simulation was not able to
proceed smoothly. The errors might be caused by the poor mesh quality
of the dimpled cylinder with partially structured mesh being used.
Due to these errors, the pressure-velocity coupling scheme was
changed to Coupled and simulations were able to continue without
further errors. The FLUENT input parameters applied in the problem
setup were tabulated in Table 8.2.
Appropriate time step sizing is required to achieve the best results
possible without sacrificing valuable computational resources. The
smaller the time step size, the longer the computational time despite
its ability to provide more accurate results. The required time step
size can be calculated by using the Strouhal (St) number, which is
Table 8.2. FLUENT Input Parameters.
Solver Pressure-Based, Transient

Unsteady Formulation Second Order Implicit
Turbulence Model SST k-ω
Discretization Pressure: Standard
Momentum: 2nd Order Upwind
Turbulent Kinetic Energy: 2nd Order Upwind
Turbulent Dissipation Rate: 2nd Order Upwind
Pressure-Velocity Coupling PISO (Smooth cylinder)
Coupled (Dimpled cylinder)
approximately 0.2 for Re 10,000 to 160,000. At least 20 to 25 time steps

are required to capture the vortex shedding and by choosing the fewest
time steps (i.e. 20), computational time can be reduced as compared to
25 time steps.
Each simulation was allowed to have a flow time of 5s to reach
convergence, hence the calculations for the respective time step size
and number of time step can be computed for each Re, and they are
tabulated in Table 8.3.
The simulations were allowed to run for 5s and the CD results were
averaged over the number of time steps. For both smooth and dimpled
cylinders, the averaged drag coefficients, CD are shown in Table 8.4.

From the numerical simulated results, there is observed drag reduc-
tion by the dimpled cylinder as compared to its smooth counterpart,
as presented in Fig. 8.16. The drag reduction is an average of 9.16%,
with greater reductions as Re number decreases.
Table 8.3. Time Step Size Used for Each Re.
Re number Velocity (ms−1 ) Time stepping size (s) No. of time steps
20,000 5.84 0.00214 2,337

40,000 11.7 0.00107 4,673
60,000 17.5 0.000714 7,003
80,000 23.4 0.000534 9,364
100,000 29.2 0.000428 11,683
120,000 35.1 0.000356 14,045
140,000 40.9 0.000306 16,340
160,000 46.7 0.000268 18,657
Table 8.4. Simulated CD Results for Both Cylinders.
Re number Smooth cylinder Dimpled cylinder % Decrease
20,000 0.706 0.562 20.4

40,000 0.659 0.555 15.8
60,000 0.614 0.548 10.7
80,000 0.596 0.549 7.89
100,000 0.584 0.541 7.36
120,000 0.573 0.539 5.93
140,000 0.565 0.549 2.83
160,000 0.557 0.544 2.33

Fig. 8.16. Simulated CD vs Re results with Fluent RANS.
Fig. 8.17. Graph of CP against θ with simulated and experimental results for Re of
60,000.
As for the simulated pressure readings, the CP values were extracted

directly from FLUENT and arranged with an interval of 15◦ . The CP
values were then plotted against the angle θ (in the case of Re 60,000),
as shown in Fig. 8.17, which is similar to Fig. 8.13 shown previously
with the addition of simulated values.
Table 8.5. Measured Pressure Readings for Smooth

Cylinder at Re 140,000.
Pressure Pressure Average

Angle (◦ ) reading 1 (Pa) reading 2 (Pa) reading (Pa)
0 940 940 940

15 730 750 740
30 220 300 260
45 −580 −370 −475
60 −1110 −770 −940

75 −1170 −500 −835
90 −820 −520 −670
105 −830 −530 −680

120 −830 −530 −680
135 −810 −510 −660
150 −840 −530 −685
165 −830 −550 −690
180 −820 −540 −680
From Fig. 8.17, it can be seen that the CP values are close for the
dimpled cylinder (blue, yellow and orange curves) before 60◦ . There is
a slight discrepancy at 60◦ and 75◦ for the smooth cylinder where the
experiment captured a higher CP . There are much larger discrepancies
at angles after 105◦ between the experimental and simulated CP values.
The experimental CP values are much lower than the simulated values.
This is because during the wind tunnel experiment, the recorded
pressure readings were observed to be extremely low from one side
of the cylinder as illustrated in Table 8.5 for the smooth cylinder at Re
140,000.
From Table 8.5, it can be seen that the measured pressure readings
at 75◦ differ by as much as −670 Pa. This resulted in a far less accurate
average pressure reading. This problem arised for the smooth cylinder
for all Re (60,000 to 140,000) from 30◦ onwards, but was not so
obvious for the dimpled cylinder. Initially, the authors suspected that
the extreme low pressure detected (on the right side from the direction
of air flow) may be due to the pressure tappings. Hence, the cylinder
was flipped over and the experiment repeated. However, the extreme
low pressure was again detected at the right side. Thus, it may be other
Table 8.6. Validation of CD Results.
Smooth Dimpled
% %
Re Experiment Simulated Difference Experiment Simulated Difference
60,000 0.955 0.614 35.7 0.896 0.548 38.8

80,000 0.951 0.596 37.3 0.869 0.549 36.8
100,000 0.945 0.584 38.2 0.863 0.541 37.3
120,000 0.938 0.573 38.9 0.855 0.539 37.0
140,000 0.934 0.565 39.5 0.875 0.549 37.3

disturbances within the wind tunnel which affected both pressure and
drag force readings.
The overall trends for the graphs are noticeable for all Re and
the respective graphs were plotted from Figs. 8.A.1 to 8.A.8 in the
Appendix.
Both the current experimental and simulated results were compared
for validation of the accuracy of the simulation. Only comparisons
between Re 60,000 to 140,000 were made as this was the Re range
for the experiment, and the CD results are shown in Table 8.6.
The differences observed in all results were approximately 35 to
40%. These deviations can be attributed to the following reasons. The
high experimental CD results may be due to the interference in the
air flow in the wind tunnel set up due to the pressure transducer and
tubings as well as the scratches made on the cylinders. The simulations
conducted have many limitations such as element count restriction and
selection of the RANS turbulence modeling. The surface roughness of
the material was also not accounted for in the CFD simulations.
8.5. Conclusion
From both the experimental and simulated results, drag reductions

were achieved by the dimpled cylinder as compared to its smooth
counterpart which corresponded to 8.39% and 9.16%, respectively.
The differences between the experimental and simulated results
are significant. It may be the insufficiently fine mesh used due to the
limitation on the number of elements. Also, the experiment set-up is
not isolated enough to prevent the interference of flow. Nonetheless,

the key hypothesis that dimpled cylinders reduce the drag forces on the
cylinders has been shown.
Clearly, more work can be done to further improve this study.
For the experimental work, better experimental setup can help to
produce more accurate and useful results, such as (1) high-precision
manufacturing of cylinder with specific surface roughness, (2) more
precise force and sensors, (3) adding end-plates to cylinder to reduce
end-gap losses and (4) particle image velocimetry of the flow of

cylinder. For the simulation study, increasing the number of elements
and improving mesh quality can also yield more representative results.
Using more computational intensive turbulence modeling such as LES
can also help in capturing and understanding the difference in the
vortex shedding of the cylinder.
Opportunities to expand this study are aplenty. With a reliable and
accurate CFD model, the work can be expanded to optimization of the
sizing, shape and arrangement of dimples on the cylinder. Studies on
the effects of dimpled cylinder on vortex shedding and vortex-induced-
vibration are also of great interest. Low-Re analysis on dimples on micro
tubes may be of interest to the biomedical industry.
While these challenges are addressed, the usage of dimpled cylinders
can be far ranging in many different industry and applications.
References
[1] Pang S, Ng EYK, Chiu WS. (2013) Comparison of Turbulence Models in Near
Wake of Transport Plane C-130H Fuselage. AIAA J 50(3): 847–852. [DOI:
10.2514/1.C032031]
[2] Ng EYK, Pang S, Chiu WS. (2013) Computational Aerodynamics of the C-130
Predicting Airflow Effect on Airdrop. International Journal of Computational
Methods 10(5): 1350025–1350033. [DOI: 10.1142/S0219876213500254]
[3] Luo Y, Liu YF, Zhang D, Ng EYK. (2014) Influence of Mor-
phology for Drag Reduction Effect of Sharkskin Surface, Journal of
Mechanics in Medicine and Biology 14(2): 1430001-1–14300016. [DOI:
10.1142/S0219519414500298]
[4] Luo Y, et al. (2015) Chemical, Mechanical and Hydrodynamic Properties
Research on Composite Drag Reduction Surface Based on Biological Sharkskin
Morphology and Mucus Nano-long Chain. Journal of Mechanics in Medicine
and Biology, accepted.
[5] Luo Y, D Zhang, Y Liu, et al. (2016) Bio/Micro-Rolling Fabrication of

Biological Sharkskin Morphology on Semi-Cured Coating and Drag Force
Experimental Research, Journal of Mechanics in Medicine and Biology, 16(02):
1650016 [15 pages] (DOI:10.1142/S0219519416500160)
[6] Drag of a Sphere. (2010) Retrieved 27 Sept 2013 from http://www.grc.nasa.
gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/dragsphere.html
[7] Anderson J. (2011) Fundamentals of Aerodynamics, 5th ed. McGraw-Hill,
New York.
[8] Yoon CH, Park JM, Park YC. (2010) Dimples Lifting Pipe for Mining Deep-Sea
Mineral Resources. United States Patent.

[9] Bearman P, Harvey J. (1993) Control of Circular Cylinder Flow by the Use of
Dimples. AIAA J 31(10): 1753–1756.
[10] Jasmina B, Zivojin M, Milos M. (2012). Experimental and Numerical Investiga-

tion of Flow around a Sphere with Dimples for Various Flow Regimes. Thermal
Science 16(4): 1013–1026.
[11] Daniel W. (2010) Analysis of Curvature Effects on Boundary Layer Separation
and Turbulence Model Accuracy for Circulation Control Applications.
Appendix
Fig. 8.A.1. Pressure coefficient plot against angle (◦ ) at Re 20,000.









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May 24, 2016 13:32 Bio-Inspired Surfaces and Applications 9in x 6in b2378-ch08 page 271

Study of Flow over Dimpled Cylinder

Tan S.P.,∗ Koh J.H. and Ng Y.K. Eddie

School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang

Drag reduction of ﬂow over a circular cylinder is done by having a

272 Bio-Inspired Surfaces and Applications

8.2. Flow over a Circular Cylinder

Study of Flow over Dimpled Cylinder for Drag Reduction 273

274 Bio-Inspired Surfaces and Applications

Fig. 8.2. Variation of CD with Re (2-D circular cylinder).7

Drag is usually characterized by its own dimensionless coefﬁcient,

Study of Flow over Dimpled Cylinder for Drag Reduction 275

Fig. 8.3. Comparison of CD between smooth and rough cylinders.7

8.3. Experimental Method

276 Bio-Inspired Surfaces and Applications

Fig. 8.4. Original and modiﬁed cylinder.

Fig. 8.5. Pressure tappings on smooth cylinder.

Study of Flow over Dimpled Cylinder for Drag Reduction 277

Fig. 8.6. Pressure tappings on dimpled cylinder.

Fig. 8.7. Thin-walled pipe and ﬂexible tube.

278 Bio-Inspired Surfaces and Applications

Fig. 8.8. Pressure transducer and digital indicator.

Fig. 8.9. Wind tunnel experimentation set up.

velocity range from 3 ms−1 to 90 ms−1 , with a turbulence intensity of

Study of Flow over Dimpled Cylinder for Drag Reduction 279

Fig. 8.10. Mounting of cylinder with the help of level gauge.

Table 8.1. Experimental CD vs Re Results for Both Cylin-

Re Smooth cylinder Dimpled cylinder % Difference

60,000 0.955 0.896 6.58

Therefore, the experiments were only carried out with Re range of

280 Bio-Inspired Surfaces and Applications

Fig. 8.11. Comparison of experimental CD vs Re results for smooth and dimpled

more signiﬁcant and it occurs at around Re 100,000, as shown

Study of Flow over Dimpled Cylinder for Drag Reduction 281

parameters such as surface roughness and dimple density were different.

Fig. 8.13. Experimental CP against θ for Re of 60,000.

282 Bio-Inspired Surfaces and Applications

the dimple cylinder is capable of reducing drag when compared with

8.4. Simulation Method

Three-Dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations

were done using ANSYS Workbench 14.5.7 (FLUENT) and the CD

Modeler found within the Workbench instead of SolidWorks to prevent

Study of Flow over Dimpled Cylinder for Drag Reduction 283

Fig. 8.14. Geometry setup of the CFD simulation.

Fig. 8.15. Meshes of smooth (left) and dimpled cylinders.

284 Bio-Inspired Surfaces and Applications

According to Jasmina et al,10 the k-ε turbulence model has proven

The Pressure-Based Solver (PBS) and the Pressure-Implicit with

Table 8.2. FLUENT Input Parameters.

Solver Pressure-Based, Transient

Study of Flow over Dimpled Cylinder for Drag Reduction 285

approximately 0.2 for Re 10,000 to 160,000. At least 20 to 25 time steps

cylinders, the averaged drag coefﬁcients, CD are shown in Table 8.4.

Table 8.3. Time Step Size Used for Each Re.

20,000 5.84 0.00214 2,337

Table 8.4. Simulated CD Results for Both Cylinders.

Re number Smooth cylinder Dimpled cylinder % Decrease

20,000 0.706 0.562 20.4