Strouhal number universality in high-speed cylinder wake flows

Abstract

Flow oscillations in the near-wake region of a 2D circular cylinder are experimentally investigated at Mach 6 over the Reynolds number range $2.3\times10^5$ to $5\times10^5$. The oscillation frequency is obtained by spectral proper orthogonal decomposition of high-speed schlieren data. The Strouhal number based on the length of the near-wake shear layers is found to exhibit universal behavior. This corroborates experimental findings at Mach 4 from recent literature, and further, the universal behavior is also seen to hold with respect to Mach number. Time-resolved pressure measurements at the flow separation points on the cylinder aft surface show that coherent oscillatory activity occurs with a phase difference of $\pi$ radians between the two statistically-symmetric halves of the flow. This aspect of the flow dynamics at high speeds is in common with its low-speed counterpart, i.e. the canonical problem of cylinder wake in an incompressible flow.