Computation of viscous uniform and shear flow over a circular cylinder by a finite element method

The incompressible viscous uniform and shear flow past a circular cylinder is studied. The two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations are solved by a finite element method. The governing equations are discretized by a weighted residual method in space. The stable three-step scheme is applied to the momentum equations in the time integration. The numerical model is firstly applied to the computation of the lid-driven cavity flow for its validation. The computed results agree well with the measured data and other numerical results. Then, it is used to simulate the viscous uniform and shear flow over a circular cylinder for Reynolds numbers from 100 to 1000. The transient time interval before the vortex shedding occurs is shortened considerably by introduction of artificial perturbation. The computed Strouhal number, drag and lift coefficients agree well with the experimental data. The computation shows that the finite element model can be successfully applied to the viscous flow problem.