Vortex Shedding From Two Surface-Mounted Prismatic Obstacles in Lock-in Regime

Periodic vortex shedding from two surface-mounted cubes, of height H, in tandem arrangement placed in a thin boundary layer is investigated for a spacing 2H using phase-averaged laser Doppler velocimetry measurements. Tests were conducted for a Reynolds number of 22000, based on H and the freestream velocity, and an approximately 0.07H thick laminar boundary layer. For this obstacle spacing, the shedding frequency scales linearly with the obstacle spacing. It is shown that in this lock-in regime, periodic shedding is triggered by the displacement of the vertical flow along the front face of the downstream obstacle and is thus different from that observed for two-dimensional cylinders in uniform streams. The existence of this three-dimensional effect is then used to explain why lock-in cannot be observed for square cylinders in tandem arrangement.