Drag force on a free surface-piercing yawed circular cylinder in steady flow

The force distribution on a surface-piercing yawed cylinder surface differs significantly from that on a surface-piercing vertical cylinder. The established numerical model for flow past the surface-piercing yawed cylinder with yaw angles from −45° to 45° was solved by the standard large-eddy simulation (LES) methodology. Six cases at intervals of ±15° relative to the vertical were studied at the Reynolds number of 27 000 and the Froude number of 0.8 based on the cylinder diameter and free-stream velocity, among which the drag forces on four cylinders with yaw angles from −15° to 30° were tested for the validation of the LES approach. The results revealed that the time-averaged total drag coefficient for all cases increases with the increase of yaw angle compared to that of the surface-piercing vertical cylinder, even over 2.5 for the ±45°-yawed cylinders. The sectional drag coefficients for the negatively yawed cylinders are much greater than that for the vertical cylinder, and much less for the positively yawed cylinders. The unbalanced hydrostatic pressures on the inclined section are mainly responsible for those increment and decrement. Once the hydrostatic pressure was removed, the sectional drag coefficient on the mid-span of the positively yawed cylinder increases from the top section to the bottom, and decreases for the negatively yawed cylinder. The corresponding integrated total drag coefficient decreases with the increase of the yaw angle to ±15°, then increases with the further increase of the magnitude of yaw angle.