Direct numerical simulations of three-dimensional flows past obstacles with a vortex penalization method

A vortex method with penalization is proposed in order to simulate three-dimensional incompressible bluff body flows. This approach combines the robustness of vortex methods and the flexibility of penalization methods to impose boundary conditions on the obstacle. Far field boundary conditions are handled in a FFT-based Poisson solver. A validation of the proposed numerical method is carried out in the context of flow past a sphere and further simulations are performed in the more challenging case of flow past a hemisphere.