Influences of blockage ratio and Reynolds number on the spatiotemporal dynamics around a rectangular prism

Particle image velocimetry is used to experimentally investigate the influence of blockage ratio (BR) and Reynolds number (Re) on the turbulent flow around a rectangular prism with depth-to thickness ratio of 3. The prism was selected because it falls within the intermediate regime where the turbulent dynamics is sensitive to the incoming boundary condition. The tested blockage ratios were 2.5%, 5%, and 10% at Reynold numbers of 3000 and 7500. The results are analyzed in terms of the mean flow, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), frequency spectra, reverse flow area, as well as spectral proper orthogonal decomposition (SPOD). The results indicate that as blockage ratio and/or Reynolds number increase, the tendency of reattachment of the separated shear layer onto the surface of the prism increases while the location of maximum TKE over the prism shifts toward the leading edge, indicating earlier transition of the separated shear layer from laminar to turbulence. For the cases without mean reattachment over the side faces of the prisms, the separated bubble over and downstream of the prism exhibits strong tendency of synchronization in terms of the instantaneous areas of the flow reversal, suggesting a global instability mechanism encompassing the entire prism. In cases with mean flow reattachment, conversely, the low-frequency flapping motion manifests over the prism. SPOD analysis further shows that the relevant shedding dynamics are captured in the first mode and the von Kármán shedding structures have the highest energy.