Active Control Methods for Drag Reduction in Flow Over Bluff Bodies (Keynote)

In this paper, we present two successful results from active controls of flows over a circular cylinder and a sphere for drag reduction. The Reynolds number range considered for the flow over a circular cylinder is 40∼3900 based on the free-stream velocity and cylinder diameter, whereas for the flow over a sphere it is 105 based on the free-stream velocity and sphere diameter. The successful active control methods are a distributed (spatially periodic) forcing and a high-frequency (time periodic) forcing. With these control methods, the mean drag and lift fluctuations decrease and vortical structures are significantly modified. For example, the time-periodic forcing with a high frequency (larger than 20 times the vortex shedding frequency) produces 50% drag reduction for the flow over a sphere at Re = 105. The distributed forcing applied to the flow over a circular cylinder results in a significant drag reduction at all the Reynolds numbers investigated.