Effect of plate length on drag reduction of square faced bluff body

¹ Department of Aeronautical Engineering, Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai - 600 072, India
² Department of Aeronautical Engineering, Kalaignar Karunanidhi Institute of Technology, Coimbatore - 641 402, India
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Sathyamangalam, Erode - 638 401, India
⁴ Institute of Power Engineering, National Energy University, Jalan Ikram-Uniten, Kajang 43000, Selangor, Malaysia
⁵ Division of Research and Development, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, Punjab, India - 144411
⁶ Department of Mechanical Engineering and University Centre for Research & Development, Chandigarh University, Mohali 140413, Punjab, India

^* Corresponding author: subramaniyan@bitsathy.ac.in

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of splitter plates on drag reduction in square-faced bodies using a water flow channel with three different splitter plate lengths: 2.5 cm, 1.8 cm, and 1.25 cm. The height and thickness were kept constant at 2.5 cm and 3 mm. Reynolds numbers ranging from 8977.5 to 3847.5 were tested. Results showed that increasing the Reynolds number increased the pressure hill height for both splitter plates forward as well backward. In the first case the forward splitter plate, shorter lengths resulted in reduced pressure hill heights. For the backward splitter plate, longer lengths led to larger pressure hill heights. The best drag reduction effect is got when the splitter plate length and the model length are of equal length. Overall, the effective drag reduction effect is shown by the backward splitter plate compared to the forward, the difference in value is almost 30%. These results are eminent for getting a perception of relation that exist between splitter plate length and drag reduction in square-faced bodies.