Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2019) 41:39

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40430-018-1554-1

TECHNICAL PAPER

Flow of power‑law fluid past a circular cylinder in the vicinity

of a moving wall
P. J. Zhang1 · J. Z. Lin1 · X. K. Ku1

Received: 7 August 2018 / Accepted: 21 December 2018

© The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering 2018

Abstract
In this paper, the flow of power-law fluid over a circular cylinder near a moving wall is simulated numerically using a
finite volume method for different Reynolds numbers (Re = 1, 10, 40), gap ratios (G/D = 0.2–1.0), and power-law indices
(n = 0.5–1.5). The effects of fluid inertia, wall proximity, and rheological property on the drag and lift coefficient, gap flow
characteristics, and recirculation modes are studied. Possible mechanisms for the variation of the drag and lift coefficient and
the change in recirculation mode are addressed. The results show that the decrease in G/D or Re results in the increase in drag
and lift coefficient, while the effect of n is dependent on Re and G/D. For the drag coefficient, shear-thickening fluid is more
sensitive to the change of G/D. The variation of the lift coefficient can be explained by the movement of angular position of
the front stagnation point. The redistribution of the flow around the cylinder results in different recirculation modes. Five
distinct modes are found and the critical value of G/D for the mode change decreases with the decrease in n and increase in
Re. Variation of the relative vortex intensity and the relative flow intensity nearby leads to the change of recirculation mode.

Keywords  Power-law fluid · Flow past a near-wall cylinder · Wall proximity effect · Recirculation mode · Numerical
simulation

1 Introduction
The flow past a circular cylinder has attracted a vast amount
of attention recently owing to its theoretical and practical
significance. The interactions between the cylinder and the
wall will result in a more complex flow when the cylinder
is placed in the proximity of a solid wall. In such flows, the
Reynolds number and the gap ratio G/D (where G is the gap
height, D is the cylinder diameter) are the dominant param-
eters affecting the flow. Previous researches have focused on
the stationary wall where the boundary layer on the wall also
exerted great influence on the flow characteristics. Bearman
and Zdravkovich [1] studied experimentally the influence
of gap ratio on the vortex shedding of the cylinder near a
stationary wall and found that the regular vortex shedding
Technical Editor: Cezar Negrao, PhD.
* J. Z. Lin
mecjzlin@public.zju.edu.cn
1
Department of Mechanics, State Key Laboratory of Fluid
Power and Mechatronic Systems, Zhejiang University,
Hangzhou 310027, People’s Republic of China
only existed for G/D > 0.3 and the Strouhal number (St) did
not change within the gap ratio studied. Grass et al. [2] also
investigated the variation of St at different gap ratios and
found that St increased to its peak slightly and then declined
as G/D decreased, which is contrary to the results given by
Bearman and Zdravkovich [1]. Besides, they thought that jet
flow deflected by the downstream separation zone inhibited
the large-scale vortex roll-up and canceled the vorticity in
the free shear layer arising from the cylinder surface, which
resulted in the suppression of vortex shedding. Similarly,
Taniguchi and Miyakoshi [3] attributed the suppression of
vortex shedding to the loss of high concentration of vorticity
in the shear layer under the cylinder through absorption by
the opposite vorticity and penetration of highly turbulent
eddies in the boundary layer on the wall. Price et al. [4]
reported that the inhibition of shear layer’s growth accounted
for the vortex shedding suppression and shear layers on the
cylinder and the wall did not cancel each other out, which
was contrary to the explanation of Grass et al. [2] and Tani-
guchi and Miyakoshi [3]. Lin et al. [5] studied flow charac-
teristics around a near-wall circular cylinder experimentally
and found that the gap flow exhibited wall-jet characteristics
and the non-dimensional velocity profile presented excellent

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similarity at small gap ratio. Harichandan and Roy [6] per-
formed simulations for single and tandem cylinders with
finite volume method for Re = 100 and 200, and analyzed
the complex interaction between boundary layer on the wall
and the shear layer on the cylinder surface. Besides, there
are other researches on flow past tandem cylinders [7] and
rotating cylinder [8] near a stationary wall.
To study the wall proximity effect alone without the
interference of the boundary layer on the wall, researches
turned to investigate the flow around the circular cylinder
in the vicinity of a moving wall with the same velocity of
the free stream. One of the earliest experiments on the cyl-
inder translating parallel to a wall, which was equivalent
to a cylinder placed near a moving wall, was performed by
Taneda [9]. In the experiment, the G/D was set to 0.1 and
0.6 at Re = 170. For G/D = 0.1, a single row of vortex street
was formed and the wavelength of the vortex street, which
means the distance between two adjacent vortices, increased
as G/D further decreased. Nishino et al. [10] investigated
experimentally the flow around a circular cylinder near a
moving wall at a sub-critical Re. It was observed that, for
a cylinder with end-plates, the flow was essentially two-
dimensional. At the small gap (G/D < 0.35), the vortex shed-
ding was totally ceased and the drag coefficient was nearly
constant. However, for the cylinder without end-plates, the
Karman-type vortices were not generated and a nearly con-
stant drag coefficient was observed in a wide gap ratio rang-
ing from 2.0 to 0.05. Huang and Sung [11] employed the
immersed boundary method (IBM) to study moving wall’s
effect for Re < 600. They identified different vortex shed-
ding regimes and studied the flow instability through the
Rayleigh’s theorem and Fjørtoft’s condition. The critical gap
ratio to suppress the alternate vortex shedding was found to
decrease as Re increased and became constant for Re > 500.
Furthermore, a single St-G/D curve could be observed at
different Reynolds number if the separation velocity defined
by Roshko [12] was used to define the Strouhal number. Li
et al. [13] performed a similar numerical simulation with
immersed interface method (IIM) at a low Reynolds num-
ber regime (Re = 20–100). In their study, the lift coefficient
presented a monotonic decrease as G/D increased and the
drag force reached its peak at G/D = 0.5 for various Reynolds
numbers. However, in a recent study of Jiang et al. [14],
the drag coefficient was found to decrease monotonically
with the increase in G/D in the steady regime. Through the
relative principle, Rao et al. [15] investigated the flow over
a cylinder near a moving wall with the spectral element
method, which was equivalent to a circular cylinder trans-
lating at different heights above a wall. When the flow kept
steady, a monotonic decrease for both the drag coefficient
and the lift coefficient was observed as G/D increased for
Re < 200. As for the rotating cylinder, Stewart et al. [16]
investigated the flow of circular cylinder rolling and sliding
13
(2019) 41:39
on a wall for Reynolds number varying from 20 to 500 with
the spectral element method. The prograde rolling was found
to destabilize the wake flow, while the retrograde rotation
increased the critical Reynolds number for vortex shedding
and transition.
In light of the earlier works, the flow characteristics in
the unsteady flow regime such as vortex shedding suppres-
sion, hydrodynamic coefficient, and transition mechanism
were researched extensively and well understood for the
flow past a circular cylinder near a stationary wall. How-
ever, the steady flow over a circular cylinder near a moving
wall has not been studied systematically and there are even
some contradictions among them as shown above. Hence,
in this paper, the steady flow over a circular cylinder in the
vicinity of a moving wall is investigated thoroughly at three
fixed Reynolds number, i.e., 1, 10, and 40, to find out effects
of wall proximity and fluid inertia on flow characteristics
and the mechanism behind them. Besides, the researches
mentioned above only involve the flow of Newtonian fluid,
and there is a lack of research on the non-Newtonian fluid,
while it is often encountered in practical applications, for
example, the pipelines on the seabed where the water car-
ries mud and sand and shows non-Newtonian property. For
complement, the fluid rheology property is also taken into
account. Among the non-Newtonian fluid, the power-law
fluid is a kind of typical fluid because its rheological prop-
erty such as shear-shinning and shear-thickening has an
effect on free convection [17], natural convection [18], and
heat transfer enhancement [19]. Therefore, the purpose of
this paper is to study the hydrodynamic coefficient, gap flow
characteristics, and recirculation mode for the steady flow
of power-law fluid with different power-law indices over a
circular cylinder near a moving wall for different gap ratios
and explain the formation mechanism by investigating the
vortex characteristics in the wake behind the cylinder.
2 Numerical model
2.1 Problem definition
The sketch of the power-law fluid flowing past a circular cyl-
inder in the vicinity of a moving wall is shown in Fig. 1. A
circular cylinder of diameter D is placed at a gap height of
G over a moving wall which moves with the same velocity
of the uniform incoming flow so that the interference of the
boundary layer on the wall is eliminated. In this study, the
key non-dimensional parameters are gap ratio G/D, Reynolds
number and the power-law index n, which indicates the rate of
shear-thinning or shear-thickening against the shear rate. For
the power-law fluid, the Reynolds number is generalized by
Metzner and Reed [20], i.e. Re = ρU2−nDn/K, where ρ is fluid
Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2019) 41:39 Page 3 of 12  39

( 2
𝜕 ux 𝜕 2 ux
)
𝜕ux 𝜕u 𝜕u 1 𝜕p
+ u x x + uy x = − +v + , (2)
𝜕t 𝜕x 𝜕y 𝜌 𝜕x 𝜕x2 𝜕y2

( 2 )
𝜕uy 𝜕uy 𝜕uy 1 𝜕p 𝜕 uy 𝜕 2 uy
+ ux + uy =− +v + , (3)
𝜕t 𝜕x 𝜕y 𝜌 𝜕y 𝜕x2 𝜕y2

where u and p are the velocity and pressure, respectively;

the apparent kinematic viscosity v is calculated through a
power-law model [21]:
[ ( )] n−1
𝜕ux 2 𝜕uy 2 𝜕ux 𝜕uy 2
) ( ) (
K
v= 2 +2 + + . (4)
Fig. 1  Sketch of the flow past a circular cylinder near a moving wall
𝜌 𝜕x 𝜕y 𝜕y 𝜕x

The computational domain is presented in Fig. 2a in

density and K is the consistency coefficient of the power-law which the coordinate origin is set at the center of the cylin-
fluid. der. A uniform horizontal velocity is specified at the inlet,
and the outlet is set fully developed. Upper and lower bound-
2.2 Governing equations and boundary conditions aries are given a fixed velocity same as the free stream to
simulate the infinite boundary and the moving wall, respec-
Simulations are performed with Open FOAM to solve the tively. The no-slip boundary condition is employed on the
two-dimensional incompressible continuity and Navier–Stokes cylinder’s surface. The upstream, downstream, and upward
equations: distances are set in the condition of no evident boundaries’
influence on the flow characteristics. To build structured
𝜕ux 𝜕uy
+ = 0, (1)
𝜕x 𝜕y

Fig. 2  Schematics of the computational domain

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grids, the computational domain is partitioned into several Table 1  Hydrodynamic coefficients for cases with different grid den-
blocks as shown in Fig. 2b. The mesh is gradually refined sity
as grids get closer to the cylinder and the height of the first Grid density CD CL
layer of mesh on the cylinder surface is approximately
Coarse 2.276653 (0.059%) 1.382346 (0.14%)
0.003D.
Medium 2.275309 (0.00040%) 1.383437 (0.058%)
Fine 2.275300 1.384245

3 Methodology

3.1 Numerical schemes
Table 2  Hydrodynamic coefficients for cases with different domain
sizes
There exist some different methods and models of numerical
simulation for the flow past a circular cylinder, for example, LU/D LD/D H/D CD CL
finite difference method and Unsteady Double Wake Model. 10 30 10 2.350765 (4.62%) 1.424221 (4.10%)
In this paper, Eqs. (1)–(4) are solved with the finite volume 15 35 15 2.275309 (1.27%) 1.383437 (1.12%)
method (FVM) and the pressure implicit with splitting of 20 40 20 2.246757 1.368118
operators (PISO) algorithm. The unsteady term is discretized
with first-order Euler implicit scheme, while the surface
normal gradient in the diffusion term is discretized with a
central difference scheme together with the non-orthogonal simulation results and their relative differences to the finest
correction. For the convection term, a linear interpolation is case are listed in Table 1. Obviously, as the mesh is refined,
applied to calculate the quantities on the cell surface. Note the relative difference of the force coefficients to the ones in
that, even though all flows involved are in the steady regime, the fine mesh is below 0.2%. For the sake of accuracy and
transient solver is still adopted here to present the develop- low cost of computation resources, the medium grid density
ment of the wake. is adopted in the subsequent sections.

3.2 Grid independence test

The mesh convergence is checked by three mesh cases
with different grid density for G/D = 0.2 and Re = 40. In the
coarse one, there are 240 grids uniformly distributed on the
cylinder’s surface and 25 layers of mesh in the near-cylinder
square zone. The total number of mesh cell is 15,900. In the
latter two cases, the grid number on the surface increases to
320 and 400, while the mesh layers increase to 35 and 40,
so that the total cell number becomes 23,500 and 30,700,
respectively.
To verify the grid independence, two hydrodynamic coef-
ficients are investigated, namely the drag coefficient CD and
the lift coefficient CL, which are defined as:
FD
CD = / , (5)
𝜌U 2 D 2
FL
CL = / , (6)
𝜌U 2 D 2
where FD and FL are the drag force and lift force obtained
by projecting the integrated total force to x and y directions.
Besides, CD is used as an indicator for the steady state. If
the relative error of CD between two sequent time steps is
less than 1­ 0−6, the numerical simulation is finished. The
3.3 Independence study of domain size
To study the effect of the domain size, the computational
domains with different upstream distance (L U), down-
stream distance (LD), and upward distance (H) are investi-
gated. The simulation results are summarized in Table 2.
It is found that the difference declines as the domain size
increases. To save the computational cost, L U  = 15D,
LD = 35D and H = 15D are used in the subsequent sections.
3.4 Validation
To further verify the accuracy of numerical schemes in
simulating the flow past a circular cylinder near a moving
wall, the hydrodynamic coefficients obtained in Newtonian
fluid at Re = 25 and Re = 45 are compared with the results
given by Rao et al. [15] and Jiang et al. [14] as shown in
Fig. 3. For Re = 25, the relative errors for the drag coef-
ficient in all cases except at G/D = 2.0 are below 4%, while
the relative errors for the lift coefficient in all cases are
smaller than 2.5%. As for the case at Re = 45, all the rela-
tive errors for hydrodynamic coefficients are below 2%.
Thus, it is evident that the hydrodynamic coefficients agree
well that given by the former researches and the accuracy
of numerical schemes is verified.

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Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering
Fig. 3  Variation of the hydrodynamic coefficient
4 Results and discussion
4.1 Hydrodynamic force coefficient
After validating the numerical method, simulations for
power-law fluid in the steady regime are carried out at
three different Reynolds numbers for n = 0.5–1.5 and
G/D = 0.2–1.0 to study the effect of fluid rheological prop-
erty and the wall proximity on the hydrodynamic force
coefficient. The variation of the drag coefficient and the lift
coefficient are plotted against the power-law index in Fig. 4.
For comparison, the results for the flow of power-law fluid
over a unconfined cylinder [22] are also presented. It is evi-
dent that wall proximity results in an obvious monotonous
increase in both the drag coefficient and the lift coefficient,
irrespective of the power-law index and the Reynolds num-
ber. Similar trend can be found in the numerical simula-
tions given by Jiang et al. [14] and Rao et al. [15]. Besides,
the sensitivity of the hydrodynamic force coefficient to the
change of the gap distance varies with the power-law index.
As can be seen from the diagram, the amplification of the
drag coefficient is larger in the shear-thickening fluid (n > 1)
than those in the Newtonian fluid (n = 1) and shear-thinning
fluid (n < 1), which leads to the difference in the variation
trend at different gap ratios. For Re = 1 and Re = 10, the trend
of the drag coefficient against the power-law index changes
gradually as G/D decreases, from a monotonous decrease to
a monotonous increase. As for Re = 40, the drag coefficient
increases monotonously with the increase in n, and the CD–n
curve becomes steeper as G/D decreases. Unlike the drag
coefficient, the lift coefficient of the cylinder arises from
the wall proximity, i.e., so-called ground effect. For Re = 1,
the lift coefficient increases to its peak at n = 1.0 and then
decrease as n further increases for several large gap ratios.
(2019) 41:39 Page 5 of 12  39
When the gap is small enough, a monotonous increase in the
lift coefficient as n increases is observed. As Re increases
to 10 and 40, the lift coefficient increases monotonously as
n increases for the whole power-law index range. Generally
speaking, decrease in G/D and Re results in an increase in
the hydrodynamic coefficient, while variation trend of the
hydrodynamic coefficient against the power-law index varies
with different G/D and Re.
4.2 Gap flow characteristics
To study the blockage effect of the wall, the variation of the
gap flow ratio is investigated. The gap flow ratio, which is
defined by Jiang et al. [14], is the ratio between the total gap
flow rate and the total incoming flow rate below the cylinder
centerline (y = 0). The gap flow ratio is always equal to 1
for an isolated circular cylinder and decreases if part of the
fluid is deflected to the upper side of the cylinder. Figure 5
shows the variation of the gap flow ratio against the gap
ratio for different power-law fluids at fixed Reynolds num-
ber. Results indicate that increase in n and decrease in G/D
result in a decrease in the gap flow ratio. Besides, the gap
flow ratio decreases with the decrease of Re. Shear layer on
the moving wall plays an important role in restricting the
flow through the gap, and the shear layer becomes thicker
with the decrease in Re. As for the power-law index, the flow
resistance is larger in the shear-thickening fluid than that
in the shear-thinning fluid under the same shear rate. Con-
sequently, the fluid with a larger power-law index applies
severer resistance to the flow and deflects a larger percentage
of fluid to the upper side, which results in a decrease in the
gap flow ratio.
Wall proximity redistributes the incoming flow around
the circular cylinder and alters the front stagnation point on
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Fig. 4  Variation of the drag coefficient (left) and lift coefficient (right) against the power-law index

the cylinder surface. Since the stagnation point is the posi-
tion where the incoming flow splits into two streams, the
factors that contribute to the decrease in the gap flow ratio
lead to a downward movement of the front stagnation point
with respect to the front point of the cylinder. That is to say,
increase in Re or G/D and decrease in n reduce the front
stagnation point angle, i.e., the included acute angle between
the x-axis and the radius pointing to the front stagnation
point, as shown in Fig. 6. Furthermore, the variation of the
lift coefficient against the gap ratio for different power-law
fluid (omitted for simplification) is analogous to that of the
angular position of the front stagnation point at Re = 10 and

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Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering
Fig. 5  Variation of the gap flow ratio against the gap ratio
Re = 40. Similar trend is found by Jiang et al. [14] at finite
Reynolds numbers. However, two variation trends are quite
different at Re = 1. This is because the lift force arises from
the flow asymmetry and the front stagnation point is closely
related to the pressure distribution since it is the maximum-
pressure-coefficient point. In creep flow, the viscous force is
comparable to the inertial force and makes considerable con-
tributions to the lift force. As Re further increases, inertial
forces outweigh the viscous forces and become the dominant
source of the lift force. Consequently, variation of the lift
coefficient and movement of the front stagnation point are
increasing alike as Re increases.
4.3 Recirculation mode
For the power-law fluid flowing past an isolated cylinder,
there are two separate recirculation zones behind the cyl-
inder if the Reynolds number exceeds the critical value
for flow separation. The recirculation length increases
(2019) 41:39 Page 7 of 12  39
monotonously with the increase in n or Re within the steady
regime. As referred in Sect. 4.2, wall proximity redistrib-
utes the flow around the cylinder. Consequently, the recir-
culation zone will exhibit several distinct modes as shown
in Fig. 7. The phase diagram of the recirculation modes at
different Reynolds number is presented in Fig. 8. It is evi-
dent that as G/D decreases, the recirculation mode changes
gradually from Mode 2 to Mode 5 at Re = 10 or from Mode
1 to Mode 4 at Re = 40 within the gap ratio range investi-
gated. The critical gap ratio for the mode change decreases
as n decreases, which means that the shear-thickening fluid
changes the recirculation mode more easily than the other
two types under wall proximity. Comparison of two-phase
diagrams indicates that for a certain type of power-law fluid,
the critical gap ratio for mode change decreases as the Re
increase.
In Mode 1, fluid in the upper vortex near the junc-
tion of two recirculation zones is partly attracted by the
lower vortex, which makes the lower recirculation zone
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Fig. 6  Variation of the angle position of the front stagnation point
no longer attached to the cylinder surface. Two recircula-
tion zones are nearly equal in size within Mode 1, and the
lower recirculation reattaches to the cylinder’s surface at
the critical point between Mode 1 and Mode 2. As G/D
further decreases, the trend mentioned above is reversed.
Part of fluid in the lower recirculation is attracted by the
upper vortex, and the upper recirculation departs from
the cylinder surface. The core of two recirculation zones,
in which the streamlines are closed, shrinks at first and
then grows with the decrease in G/D as shown in Fig. 9.
At the critical G/D for Mode 2 and Mode 3, the upper
recirculation zone reattaches to the cylinder surface and
becomes much bigger than the lower recirculation zone.
The recirculation zone changes to Mode 3 as the cylinder
further approaches the wall. The lower recirculation zone
departs from the cylinder surface again, and two recircula-
tion zones shrink until the lower vortex diminishes. Note
that, Mode 1 and Mode 3 are similar to each other but the
sizes of two recirculation zones are obviously different in
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(2019) 41:39
Mode 3. After that, the upper recirculation zone continues
shrinking as G/D decreases.
4.4 Wake characteristics
To understand the mechanism behind the change of recircu-
lation mode, the wake dynamics in the recirculation zone is
investigated. Since the basic flow characteristics are analo-
gous at Re = 10 and 40, which is obvious from the phase
diagram, we just consider cases at Re = 40 in the follow-
ing paragraph. Figure 10 shows the variation of the non-
dimensional vorticity (wD/U) at the vortex centroid against
the gap ratio for different power-law fluids at Re = 40. At
first, two non-dimensional vorticity increases to the peak
at the end of Mode 1 as G/D decreases, which means wall
proximity promotes the growth of shear layer on the cylinder
surface at large gap ratio. As G/D further decreases, non-
dimensional vorticity at the lower vortex centroid decreases
to the minimum at the end of Mode 2. According to [14],
Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2019) 41:39 Page 9 of 12  39

Fig. 7  Vector diagram and streamline profile behind the circular cylinder

Fig. 8  Phase diagram of the recirculation mode

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Fig. 9  Streamline profile of the recirculation zone behind the cylinder for Re = 40 and n = 1.0 (the length of red centerline is 4D)

Fig. 10  Variation of non-dimensional vorticity at vortex centroid at Re = 40

the shear layer generated on the moving wall weakens the
shear layer on the lower side of the cylinder. However, the
results indicate that the gap flow also weakens the shear
layer on the upper side of the cylinder. Interestingly, both
non-dimensional vorticity increases again at small gap ratio.
As shown in Fig. 5c, the gap flow ratio declines faster at
small gap ratio, which overweighs the weakening effect of
the gap flow and enhances the shear layer on the upper side
of the cylinder. Since the shear layer on the lower side of
the cylinder is too weak to form a vortex, the lower vortex
is induced by the upper vortex at small gap ratios.
As referred in Sect. 4.3, part of fluid near the boundary
is attracted by either lower vortex or the upper vortex in
different recirculation modes. The relative intensity of two
vortices is one key factor in determining the recirculation
mode. Since the mode variation and the vorticity characteris-
tics are analogous for different power-law fluids, we conduct
further study of cases at Re = 40, n = 0.8. Variation of the

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Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering
Fig. 11  Variation of the ratio of vorticity at two vertex centroid
(Re = 40, n = 0.8)
Fig. 12  Variation of the ratio of mean streamwise velocity below and
above the cylinder within 0.5D (Re = 40, n = 0.8)
ratio of vorticity at lower vortex centroid and the upper vor-
tex centroid for Re = 40 and n = 0.8 is presented in Fig. 11.
Besides, the vortex is formed by the rolling-up of flow in
the vicinity of the shear layer. Thus, variation of the ratio
of mean streamwise velocity below and above the cylinder
within 0.5D is also investigated and shown in Fig. 12. A
local extreme value can be found within Mode 1 or Mode
2, indicating two reverse variation trends of vortex intensity
on two sides of the extreme point. Near the critical gap ratio
for Mode 1 and Mode 2, the intensity of the lower vortex
is relatively greater than that of the upper vortex. However,
the ratio of two mean streamwise velocities almost reaches
its peak, which means that it is hard for the lower vortex to
full roll-up. Consequently, part of fluid is attracted by the
upper vortex and the recirculation zone changes into Mode
2. Similarly, near the critical gap ratio for Mode 2 and Mode
(2019) 41:39 Page 11 of 12  39
3, though the intensity of the upper vortex increases, a more
rapid increase in the flow intensity near the upper shear layer
makes it hard for the upper vortex to full roll-up. Thus, part
of the fluid is attracted by the lower vortex.
5 Conclusions
The power-law fluid past a circular cylinder in the vicin-
ity of a moving wall is studied numerically. The hydrody-
namic coefficients, gap flow characteristics, and recircula-
tion modes are investigated for Reynolds number ranging
from 1 to 40, gap ratio G/D = 0.2–1.0 and power-law index
n = 0.5–1.5. The following main conclusions can be drawn.
Wall proximity results in an obvious increase in drag and
lift coefficients. The sensitivity of both coefficients to the
change of G/D varies with n. The amplification of the drag
coefficient is larger in the shear-thickening fluid than those
in the Newtonian fluid and shear-thinning fluid. The lift coef-
ficient increases to its peak at n = 1.0 and then decrease as
n further increases for large G/D at Re = 1. When G/D is
small enough, the lift coefficient increases monotonously as
n increases. As Re increases to 10 and 40, the lift coefficient
increases monotonously as n increases. A decrease in G/D
and Re results in an increase in drag and lift coefficient,
while variation trend of the coefficient against n varies with
different G/D and Re.
The gap flow ratio decreases with the increase in n and
the decrease in G/D and Re, and declines faster at small n,
which overweighs the weakening effect of the gap flow and
enhances the shear layer on the upper side of the cylinder.
The flow resistance is larger in the shear-thickening fluid
than that in the shear-thinning fluid, so that the fluid with
a larger n deflects a larger percentage of fluid to the upper
side, resulting in a decrease in the gap flow ratio. Wall prox-
imity redistributes the incoming flow around the cylinder
and alters the front stagnation point on the cylinder surface.
Increase in Re or G/D and decrease in n reduce the front
stagnation point angle.
The redistribution of the flow around the cylinder results
in various recirculation modes. Five distinct modes are found
and the recirculation length increases monotonously with the
increase in n or Re. The critical value of G/D for the mode
change decreases with the decrease in n and increase in Re.
The shear-thickening fluid is easier to change the recircula-
tion mode than the Newtonian fluid and the shear-thinning
fluid when the cylinder approaches the wall. The core of two
recirculation zones shrinks at first and then grows with the
decrease in G/D. Part of fluid near the boundary is attracted
by either lower vortex or the upper vortex in different recir-
culation modes. The relative intensity of two vortices is one
key factor in determining the recirculation mode.
13
 39   Page 12 of 12 Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering
Acknowledgements  The authors would like to thank the Major Pro-
gram of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.
11632016).
13. Li Z, Jaiman RK, Khoo BC (2016) An immersed interface method
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