Numerical study on viscoelastic fluid flow past a rigid body

•Viscoelastic flow past a bluff body is simulated by using Penalization method.•Drag of the cylinder in viscoelastic flow is studied in a very board range parameter space.•Drag behavior of the cylinder depends mostly on Reynolds number and Weissenberg number.•The effect of viscosity ratio of polymer is pronounced at low Reynolds number and Weissenberg number. Viscoelastic non-Newtonian fluids can be achieved by adding a small amount of polymer additives to a Newtonian fluid. In this paper, numerical simulations are used to investigate the influence of such polymer additives on the behavior of flow past a circular cylinder. A numerical method is proposed that discretizes the non-linear viscoelastic system on a uniform Cartesian grid, with a penalization method to model the presence of the cylinder. The drag of the cylinder and the flow behavior under the effect of different Reynolds numbers (Re), Weissenberg numbers (Wi) and polymer viscosity ratios (ε) are studied. Numerical results show that different flow characteristics are exhibited in different parameter zones. The polymer viscosity ratio plays an important role at low Weissenberg and Reynolds numbers, but as the Reynolds and Weissenberg numbers increase, the influence of ε weakens. The drag force of the cylinder is mostly affected by the Reynolds and Weissenberg numbers. At low Reynolds numbers, the drag of the cylinder and the flow fields are only affected by a large value of Wi when the elastic forces are strong. Non-trivial drag reduction occurs only when there is vortex shedding in the wake flow, whereas drag enhancement happens when the vortex shedding is inhibited.