Effect of aligned magnetic field on the steady viscous flow past a circular cylinder

The steady viscous incompressible and slightly conducting fluid flow around a circular cylinder with an aligned magnetic field is simulated for the range of Reynolds numbers 100 ⩽ Re ⩽ 500 using the Hartmann number, M. The multigrid method with defect correction technique is used to achieve the second order accurate solution of complete non-linear Navier–Stokes equations. The magnetic Reynolds number is assumed to be small. It is observed that volume of the separation bubble decreases and drag coefficient increases as M is increased. We noticed that the upstream base pressure increases slightly with increase of M whereas downstream base pressure decreases with increase of M. The effect of the magnetic field on the flow is discussed with contours of streamlines, vorticity, plots of surface pressure and surface vorticity.