Journal of Applied Mathematics
Volume 2005 (2005), Issue 3, Pages 183-203
doi:10.1155/JAM.2005.183
Drag and pressure fields for the MHD flow around a circular cylinder at intermediate Reynolds numbers
1Department of Mathematics, Pondicherry Engineering College, Pondicherry 605014, India
2Department of Physics, Pondicherry Engineering College, Pondicherry 605014, India
3Department of Applied Mathematics, Ideal College of Arts and Sciences, Kakinada 530003, India
Received 26 November 2004; Revised 11 April 2005
Copyright © 2005 T. V. S. Sekhar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Steady incompressible flow around a circular cylinder in an
external magnetic field that is aligned with fluid flow direction
is studied for Re (Reynolds number) up to 40 and the
interaction parameter in the range 0≤N≤15 (or 0≤M≤30), where M is the Hartmann number related to N by the
relation M=2NRe, using finite difference method.
The pressure-Poisson equation is solved to find pressure fields in
the flow region. The multigrid method with defect correction
technique is used to achieve the second-order accurate solution of
complete nonlinear Navier-Stokes equations. It is found that the
boundary layer separation at rear stagnation point for Re=10
is suppressed completely when N<1 and it started growing again
when N≥9. For Re=20 and 40, the suppression is not
complete and in addition to that the rear separation bubble
started increasing when N≥3. The drag coefficient decreases
for low values of N(<0.1) and then increases with increase
of N. The pressure drag coefficient, total drag coefficient, and
pressure at rear stagnation point vary with N. It is also found that the upstream and downstream pressures on the surface of
the cylinder increase for low values of N(<0.1) and rear pressure inversion occurs with further increase of N. These results are in agreement with experimental findings.