Simulation of wind flow over square, pentagonal and hexagonal cylinders in a staggered form

In this research, simulation of wind flow over cylinders in a staggered form was carried out. The study was performed using square, pentagonal and hexagonal cylinders having square cylinder in the upstream and another two hexagonal and pentagonal cylinders in the downstream side. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program FLUENT has been used to predict the wind effect on the arrangement based on the face width of the cylinder across the flow direction. In the staggered form angles of attack was varied as 0°, 30°, 45°, 60° respectively. It is found that the drag coefficients are remarkably smaller in case of pentagonal and hexagonal shapes compared to those for a sharp-edged square cylinder and the severity of wind loading reduces from that compared to single free-standing structure. The numerical prediction shows a good agreement with previous experimental measurements of similar group of cylinders in same staggered arrangement.