Effect of the Spanwise Discretisation on Turbulent Flow past a Circular Cylinder

The effect of the spanwise discretisation on numerical calculations of the turbulent flow around a circular cylinder is systematically assessed at a subcritical Reynolds number of 10000 in the frame of three-dimensional large-eddy simulation. The eddy-viscosity k-equation subgrid scale model is implemented to evaluate unsteady turbulent flow field. Large-eddy simulation is known to be a reliable method to resolve such a challenging flow field, however, the high computational efforts restrict to low Reynolds number flow or two-dimensional calculations. Therefore, minimum spatial density in the spanwise direction or cylinder axis direction needs to be carefully evaluated in order to reduce high computational resources. In the present study, the influence of the spanwise resolutions to satisfactorily represent threedimensional complex flow features is discussed in detail and minimum spatial density for high Reynolds flow is suggested.