Experimental characterization of the lateral and near-wake flow for the BARC configuration

We experimentally investigate the high-Reynolds flow around a rectangular cylinder of aspect ratio 5:1. This configuration is the object of the international BARC benchmark. Wind tunnel tests have been carried out for the flow at zero angle of attack and a Reynolds number, based on the crossflow cylinder length and on the freestream velocity, equal, to 40 000. Velocity measurements are obtained by using hot-wire anemometry along 50 different cross-flow traverses on the cylinder side and in the near wake. Differential pressure measurements are acquired on multiple streamwise sections of the model. The obtained measurements are in a good agreement with the state-of-the-art experiments. For the first time among the several contributions to the BARC benchmark, detailed flow measurements are acquired in the region near the cylinder side and in the near-wake flow. The edges and the thickness of the shear layers detaching from the upstream edges are derived from velocity measurements. Furthermore, we compute the flow frequencies characterizing the roll-up of the shear layers, the evolution of vortical structures near the cylinder side and the vortex shedding in the wake.