2023 Impact factor 1.8
Soft Matter and Biological Physics
Eur. Phys. J. E 9, 477-485 (2002)
DOI: 10.1140/epje/i2002-10107-0

Numerical study of the flow around a cylinder using multi-particle collision dynamics

A. Lamura1, 2 and G. Gompper1

1  Institut für Festkörperforschung, Forschungszentrum Jülich, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
2  Istituto Applicazioni Calcolo, CNR, Sezione di Bari, via Amendola 122/I, 70126 Bari, Italy

a.lamura@area.ba.cnr.it
g.gompper@fz-juelich.de

(Received 23 July 2002 and Received in final form 12 January 2003 / Published online: 4 February 2003)

Abstract
A novel mesoscopic simulation technique -multi-particle collision dynamics- which has been suggested very recently, is used to study the two-dimensional flow around a square and a circular cylinder. The method is described and new proper boundary conditions are proposed to deal with wall collisions. The flow is analyzed in a wide range of Reynolds numbers in order to cover both the steady and unsteady regimes, resulting in symmetric steady vortices and periodic vortex shedding, respectively. The numerical results for integral flow parameters, such as the recirculation length, the drag and lift coefficients, the Strouhal number, as well as the spatial dependence of the velocity field, are compared with previous numerical and experimental studies. The qualitative and quantitative agreement is very good, validating the method as a promising technique to describe the hydrodynamic effects of solvent on embedded particles.

PACS
02.70.Ns - Molecular dynamics and particle methods.
47.11.+j - Computational methods in fluid dynamics.
82.20.Wt - Computational modeling; simulation.

© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2002