Numerical study of the effect of periodic jet excitation on cylinder aerodynamic instability

Numerical simulations based on the ALE finite element method are carried out to examine the aerodynamics of an oscillating circular cylinder when the separated shear flows around the cylinder are stimulated by periodic jet excitation with a shear layer instability frequency. The excitation is applied to the flows from two points on the cylinder surface. The numerical results showed that the excitation with a shear layer instability frequency can reduce the negative damping and thereby stabilize the aerodynamics of the oscillating cylinder. The change of the lift phase seems important in stabilizing the cylinder aerodynamics. The change of lift phase is caused by the merger of the vortices induced by the periodic excitation with a shear layer instability frequency, and the vortex merging comes from the high growth rate, the rapid increase of wave number and decrease of phase velocity for the periodic excitation in the separated shear flows.