Influence of Thermal Buoyancy on Vortex Shedding Behind a Rotating Circular Cylinder in Cross Flow at Subcritical Reynolds Numbers

The vortex shedding (VS) behind stationary bluff obstacles in cross-flow can be initiated by imposing thermal instability at subcritical Reynolds numbers (Re). We demonstrate here that additional thermal instability is required to be imparted in the form of heating for destabilizing the flow around a rotating bluff obstacle. A two-dimensional numerical simulation is performed in this regard to investigate the influences of cross buoyancy on the VS process behind a heated and rotating circular cylinder at subcritical Re. The flow is considered in an unbounded medium. The range of Re is chosen to be 5–45 with a dimensionless rotational speed (Ω) ranging between 0 and 4. At this subcritical range of Reynolds number the flow and thermal fields are found to be steady without the superimposed thermal buoyancy (i.e., for pure forced flow). However, as the buoyancy parameter (Richardson number, Ri) increases flow becomes unstable and subsequently, at some critical value of Ri, periodic VS is observed to characterize the flow and thermal fields. The rotation of the cylinder is found to have a stabilizing effect and as Ω increases more heating is observed to be required to destabilize the flow.