Active control of cylinder wake

The objective of this paper is to develop an efficient active control algorithm for manipulating wake flows past a solid cylinder in an electrically low-conducting fluid (e.g. seawater). The intent is to avoid both vortex shedding and flow separation from the body. It is expected to reduce the mean drag significantly. This is achieved through the introduction of a Lorentz force in the azimuthal direction generated by an array of permanent magnets and electrodes located on the solid structure. With the use of a symmetric and static Lorentz force over the entire surface of the cylinder, the vortex shedding behind the cylinder weakens and eventually disappears completely when the Lorentz force is sufficiently large. The localized Lorentz force along the rear surface of the cylinder was also used to control the vortex shedding behind the cylinder. In this case, numerical results show that the efficiency of the localized Lorentz force in controlling the flow is to that of the Lorentz force distributed over the whole surface.