Abstract
Two-dimensional numerical investigation is conducted for incompressible fluid flow around staggered square cylinders at different arrangements. The in-house code is firstly validated for flow around a single square cylinder by comparing the computations with results present in literature and fair agreement is obtained. The calculations are carried out for several values of Reynolds numbers (Re) ranging from 1 to 120. Aerodynamic features, involving the lift (CL) and drag (CD) coefficients, are predicted and analyzed for three arrangements. Besides, the physical parameters and the flow pattern in the wake are presented by varying the Reynolds number. Special care is taken regarding the sensitivity of the CL and CD values to the change in the arrangement of the square cylinders. For instance, the CD values of the three cylinders corresponding to Arrangement 1 become almost equal when 50 <= Re <= 120 with a nearly stagnant profile and take the value CD = 2. In terms of influence arrangement type on the CL values in the C23 configuration, it is seen that by further incrementing Re from the zero value, the CD reaches a minimum value of CL = -0.1 followed by a maximum of CL = 0.1 at precisely Re = 8 and Re = 20, respectively. The numerical outcomes of the present study also demonstrate that changing the arrangements of cylinders dramatically affects the fluctuation of the lift and drag coefficients values relatively to each square cylinder. Moreover, computational analysis reveals that the CD and CL evolutions depend significantly on the different cylinder combinations and the variation of Reynolds number as well.