The Magnus Effect: A Summary of Investigations to Date

1961 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. M. Swanson

The Magnus force on a rotating body traveling through a fluid is partly responsible for ballistic missile and rifle shell inaccuracies and dispersion and for the strange deviational behavior of such spherical missiles as golfballs and baseballs. A great deal of effort has been expended in attempts to predict the lift and drag forces as functions of the primary parameters, Reynolds number, ratio of peripheral to free-stream velocity, and geometry. The formulation and solution of the mathematical problem is of sufficient difficulty that experimental results give the only reliable information on the phenomenon. This paper summarizes some of the experimental results to date and the mathematical attacks that have been made on the problem.

2014 ◽  
Vol 493 ◽  
pp. 140-144
Author(s):  
Astu Pudjanarsa ◽  
Ardian Ardawalika

Experimental study on the effect of Reynolds number variation on drag force for various cut angles on D-type cylinders was performed. Five different cut angles on different cylinders were applied including: 35o, 45o, 53o, 60o, and 65o. The free stream velocity was varied so the Reynolds number also varied.The experiment was carried out at a subsonic wind tunnel. Drag force for a cut D-type cylinder (for example 35o) was measured using a force balance and wind speed was varied so that corresponding Reynolds number of 2.4×104÷5.3×104 were achieved. Wind turning angle was kept at 0o (without turning angle). This experiment repeated for other D-type cylinders.Experiment results show that, for all D-type cylinders, drag force decreased as the Reynolds number increased, then it was increased after attain minimum drag force. For all D-type cylinders and all variations of Reynolds number the drag minimum is attained at cut angle of 53o. This value is appropriate with previous experiment results.


Author(s):  
Mohammad Javad Izadi ◽  
Pegah Asghari ◽  
Malihe Kamkar Delakeh

The study of flow around bluff bodies is important, and has many applications in industry. Up to now, a few numerical studies have been done in this field. In this research a turbulent unsteady flow round a cube is simulated numerically. The LES method is used to simulate the turbulent flow around the cube since this method is more accurate to model time-depended flows than other numerical methods. When the air as an ideal fluid flows over the cube, flow separate from the back of the body and unsteady vortices appears, causing a large wake behind the cube. The Near-Wake (wake close to the body) plays an important role in determining the steady and unsteady forces on the body. In this study, to see the effect of the free stream velocity on the surface pressure behind the body, the Reynolds number is varied from one to four million and the pressure on the back of the cube is calculated numerically. From the results of this study, it can be seen that as the velocity or the Reynolds number increased, the pressure on the surface behind the cube decreased, but the rate of this decrease, increased as the free stream flow velocity increased. For high free stream velocities the base pressure did not change as much and therefore the base drag coefficient stayed constant (around 1.0).


1960 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Elder

The theory of hydrodynamic stability and the impact on it of recent work with turbulent spots is discussed. Emmons's (1951) assumptions about the growth and interaction of turbulent spots are found experimentally to be substantially correct. In particular it is shown that the region of turbulent flow on a flat plate is simply the sum of the areas that would be obtained if all spots grew independently.An investigation of the conditions required for breakdown to turbulence near a wall, that is, to initiate a turbulent spot, suggests that regardless of how disturbances are generated in a laminar boundary layer and independent of both the Reynolds number and the spatial extent of the disturbances, breakdown to turbulence occurs by the initiation of a turbulent spot at all points at which the velocity fluctuation exceeds a critical intensity. Over most of the layer this intensity is about 0·2 times the free-stream velocity. The Reynolds number is important merely in respect of the growth of disturbances prior to breakdown.


1971 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 1290-1298 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. Wilson ◽  
H. M. Caldwell

The effect of currents on pipes anchored just above the ocean floor is the subject of this study. Lift, drag, and stability of two parallel pipes, parallel to a flat plane (the sea floor) were measured for simulated ocean currents up to two knots at several subcritical, free stream Reynolds numbers. First, a wind tunnel was utilized to find the lift and drag coefficients on two parallel, rigid, cylindrical models. The effects of horizontal spacing, vertical spacing from the ground plane, and orientation angle of the horizontal free stream velocity were observed. These results were compared to date available for the single and double cylinder cases where the ground plane was absent. Second, a water tow tank was utilized to observe conditions for vortex-shedding induced vibrations for fixed end, flexible, parallel cylinders. The natural frequencies and buoyancies of these models simulated pipelines of reasonable span clamped to evenly spaced anchor blocks. A numerical example illustrates the use of these data in the design of a dynamically stable piping system close to the ocean floor.


Author(s):  
S. J. Xu ◽  
Y. Zhou ◽  
R. M. C. So

The wake structure of two side-by-side cylinders was experimentally investigated using flow visualization and hotwire techniques. The investigation was focused on the asymmetrical flow regime, i.e., T/d = 1.2 – 1.6, where T is the center-to-center cylinder spacing and d is the cylinder diameter. Experiments were conducted in both water and wind tunnels at a Reynolds number (Re) range of 150 – 14300. It has been found that, as Re increases, the flow structure behind the cylinders would change from one single vortex street to two streets with one narrow and one wide, for the same T/d. The one-street flow structure is dominated by one frequency ƒ0* = ƒ0d/U∞ ≈ 0.09, where ƒ0 is the dominant frequency and U∞ is the free-stream velocity. On the other hand, two frequencies, ƒ0* ≈ 0.3 and 0.09, characterized the two-street flow structure. These are associated with the narrow and wide street frequency, respectively. It is further observed that the critical Re, at which transition from single to two streets occurs, increases as T/d decreases. The present finding help clarify previous scattered reports for 1.2 < T/d < 1.5: detection of one dominant frequency by some but two by others.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Holmes

A common structural element encountered in semisubmersible designs is a rectangular vertical column with rounded corners. The time-averaged drag and oscillating lift and drag forces on such columns are strongly influenced by the location of the lines of flow separation on the column and hence the angle of attack of the incoming flow and the corner radius. In this paper we examine published wind tunnel data to illustrate these effects which include angle of attack and Reynolds number effects. This examination suggests that care must be exercised modeling flows around these elements. Also, the data suggest that Reynolds number effects and surface roughness effects may distort the results of scaled experiments. We use CFD simulations first to model the existing data and then to explore the possible changes in hydrodynamic properties due to Reynolds number and boundary layer effects. Recommendations are made regarding the physical and CFD modeling of the flow over these structures.


1960 ◽  
Vol 64 (589) ◽  
pp. 38-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Collar

Most University students of fluid mechanics are familiar with the problem of the evaluation of the skin friction drag of a flat plate in the absence of a pressure gradient: transition is specified, usually by the free stream velocity and the transition point, or directly by the transition Reynolds number. The solution is normally obtained numerically: so far as the writer is aware, the processes used have not been written down in closed analytical form, though to do so presents no difficulty.


1991 ◽  
Vol 233 ◽  
pp. 613-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renwei Mei ◽  
Christopher J. Lawrence ◽  
Ronald J. Adrian

Unsteady flow over a stationary sphere with small fluctuations in the free-stream velocity is considered at finite Reynolds number using a finite-difference method. The dependence of the unsteady drag on the frequency of the fluctuations is examined at various Reynolds numbers. It is found that the classical Stokes solution of the unsteady Stokes equation does not correctly describe the behaviour of the unsteady drag at low frequency. Numerical results indicate that the force increases linearly with frequency when the frequency is very small instead of increasing linearly with the square root of the frequency as the classical Stokes solution predicts. This implies that the force has a much shorter memory in the time domain. The incorrect behaviour of the Basset force at large times may explain the unphysical results found by Reeks & Mckee (1984) wherein for a particle introduced to a turbulent flow the initial velocity difference between the particle and fluid has a finite contribution to the long-time particle diffusivity. The added mass component of the force at finite Reynolds number is found to be the same as predicted by creeping flow and potential theories. Effects of Reynolds number on the unsteady drag due to the fluctuating free-stream velocity are presented. The implications for particle motion in turbulence are discussed.


Apparatus is described for measuring directly fluctuating lift and drag forces and steady mean drag force. These forces are exerted upon a cylinder placed so that its central axis is perpendicular to the direction of flow of water in a channel. Results are given for the stationary cylinder for the range of Reynolds number 3600 to 11 000.


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