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Numerical Simulation of Vortex Shedding from an Inclined Flat Plate

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DOI: 10.1080/19942060.2010.11015342

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 569–579 (2010)

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF VORTEX SHEDDING FROM

AN INCLINED FLAT PLATE
K. M. Lam* and C. T. Wei

Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China
* E-Mail: kmlam@hku.hk (Corresponding Author)

ABSTRACT: Vortex shedding flow from a flat plate inclined to a uniform flow at an angle of attack between 20o
and 45o is simulated with a finite volume CFD code with RNG k- turbulence model. The unsteady flow simulation
at Re=2104 with RANS shows two trains of vortices shed from the two different edges of the plate forming a vortex
street in the wake of the plate. The computed results provide support to previous experimental observations that in
this asymmetric flow geometry, the two trains of vortices in the vortex street possess different vortex strengths.
There is further evidence that the vortex from the plate leading edge is actually shed from a location near the trailing
end of the plate. The computed flow at successive phases of a vortex shedding cycle show different development and
shedding mechanisms for the two trains of vortices. The study also explores the generation mechanism of the
fluctuating lift and drag on the plate and its relationship with the vortex shedding processes.
Keywords: CFD, vortices, inclined flat plate, circular cylinder

1. INTRODUCTION relatively small angle of attack, down to =30o

Vortex shedding flow from a bluff body has
attracted many experimental and numerical
investigations due to its rich fluid dynamical
phenomena and important engineering
applications such as unsteady fluid loading of
structures, flow-induced vibration and flow noises.
Most of the studies investigate flow over a two-
dimensional bluff body such as a circular cylinder,
a square cylinder and a flat plate normal to the
flow. From these bodies with a symmetric
geometry, periodic vortices are shed alternatively
in the form of two trains of opposite-sign but
equal-strength vortices. The mean flow is
symmetric about the wake centerline with zero
mean lift and the fluctuating lift oscillates at the
vortex shedding frequency. Flow over a bluff
body with an asymmetrical geometry generates
lift and examples include a flat plate or an aerofoil
inclined to the flow, an asymmetric aerofoil at
zero angle of attack, or a rotating circular cylinder.
The first author has been investigating how the
periodic vortex shedding and the vortex street are
affected by the degree of wake asymmetry (e.g.,
Lam, 1996 and 2009; Lam and Leung, 2005).
For the present problem of flow past an inclined
flat plate, the mean flow is asymmetric about the
wake centerline and there exists a non-zero mean
lift on the plate. A number of past experimental
investigations studied the mean wake and vortex
shedding from flat plates at normal incidence, that
is =90o, to plates inclined to the flow at a
(e.g., Fage and Johansen, 1927; Perry and Steiner,
1987; Knisely, 1990). In the wake of these
inclined plates, a vortex street was observed with
evidence of vortex shedding alternatively from
the two edges of the plates. It was also found that
the vortex shedding frequency, f, scales with the
projected width B’ of the plate normal to the free-
stream. The Strouhal number is approximately
constant at St’=fB’/U0.15 for =30o to 90o, U
being the free-stream velocity. The issue of any
asymmetry of the vortex street was not targeted in
these previous studies, although Knisely (1990)
reported that as  becomes smaller than 30o, St’
increases sharply and the wake becomes
dominated by vortices from the trailing edge of
the plate.
It is the aim of the first author to study in details
any asymmetry in the dynamics of the two trains
of vortices shed from the different edges of the
inclined plate. Lam (1996) started to measure
some details of the vortex street behind a flat
plate inclined at =30o. Lam and Leung (2005)
further studied the vortex dynamics in the wake of
an inclined flat plate at  between 20o and 30o.
Phase-locked vortex patterns were obtained with
velocity measurement by particle-image
velocimetry (PIV). The vorticity contours showed
that at same axial distances, the train of vortices
from the trailing edge of the plate possess higher
magnitudes of peak vorticity levels than the train
of leading edge vortices. This asymmetry in the
vortex street behind a plate at high incidence is

Received: 21 Jan 2010; Revised: 27 Apr. 2010; Accepted: 29 Jun. 2010

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 4, No. 4 (2010)

not very significant and has been shown so far in
experiments by the first author. To seek additional
evidence to the experimental observation of a
street of alternating vortices of unequal strengths,
the present authors attempt a computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) study of flow over an inclined
flat plate at a number of  between 20o and 45o.
The focus is on the dynamics of vortices shed
from the two edges of the plate, any asymmetry in
the vortex street and the relationship with lift
production. This paper is to report the CFD
results, a part of which have been included in a
conference paper (Lam and Wei, 2006) which is
not widely available.
There have been numerical computation studies
on vortex shedding from bluff bodies and this
problem is often used as a benchmark test for
different CFD approaches. Traditionally, the
Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS)
equations are the least computational demanding
approach to the simulation of engineering turbulent
flow. Vortex shedding from circular and square
cylinders has been modelled with some success
with unsteady RANS solutions employing the
standard or modified k- turbulence model (e.g.,
Bosch and Rodi, 1998; Iaccarino, et al., 2003; Shao
and Zhang, 2006). With the advance of
computational resources, the more powerful
approaches of large-eddy simulation (LES) and
direct numerical simulation (DNS) are increasingly
used in the predictions of engineering flows (e.g.,
Breuer, 1998; Rodi, 2006). Compared to the square
and circular cylinders, there have been few CFD
studies on flow over a flat plate. Lasher (2001)
computed the flow over a normal flat plate with
RANS but the main emphasis was on the drag on
the plate. The most notably CFD study of flow past
an inclined flat plate is probably that of Breuer et al.
(2003). That study chose the inclined flat plate at
=18o as a representative of high-lift aerodynamic
flows with a massive separation region. Thus, the
focus was on the large-scale separation mainly from
the leading edge of the plate and the prediction
performance by RANS, LES and detached eddy
simulation. There was little information on the
dynamics of the shed vortices in the downstream
wake. As stated earlier, the main objective of the
present RANS-based CFD study is to confirm
whether there exist differences in the dynamics of
the two trains of vortices in the wake of the plate.
It is not intended to discuss the accuracy of the
CFD approaches as in Breuer el al. (2003).
As a closing note to this introduction, the
asymmetry in the vortex street behind an inclined
plate is illustrated by the picture of oil spill in the
recent incident of a stranded ship in the Great
Barrier Reef shown in Fig. A of the Appendix.
2. COMPUTATIONAL SCHEME
Flow computation was carried out for a number of
flow cases including flow over an inclined flat
plate at four different angles of attack, =20o, 25o,
30o and 45o. The main flow parameters are
summarized in Table 1. Prior to the inclined plate
flow, the validity of the CFD approach is studied
by modeling vortex shedding from a circular
cylinder at different Reynolds numbers (Re) and
the computational cases are shown in Table 2. All
the flow cases in Tables 1 and 2 are two-

Table 1 Computed global wake characteristics of flow past an inclined flat plate at Re=2104 for two-dimensional
turbulent flow cases with 62103 computational cells.

 fB/U St FL CL CL’ CD CD’

2 U  B
1 2

20o 0.49 0.169 1.11 3.24 0.08 1.20 0.03

25o 0.39 0.165 1.31 3.11 0.20 1.47 0.09
30o 0.35 0.174 1.51 3.02 0.26 1.76 0.15
45o 0.23 0.166 1.75 2.47 0.32 2.48 0.30

Table 2 Computation of flow past a circular cylinder on effect of grid size and Re for two-dimensional flow cases.

Re Computation Grid fineness St CD CL’

(total no. of cells)
103 2D, laminar Coarser: 11103 0.23 1.35 0.81
103 2D, laminar Finer: 97103 0.23 1.65 1.06
103 2D, laminar Standard: 24103 0.23 1.64 1.05
104 2D, turbulent Standard: 24103 0.29 0.43 0.062
105 2D, turbulent Standard: 24103 0.28 0.29 0.072

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 4, No. 4 (2010)
dimensional.
This study used the finite volume code FLUENT
(Fluent, Inc., 2003) to solve the incompressible
continuity and momentum equations in two
dimensions (Patankar, 1980). For the turbulent
flow cases, the equations were Reynolds-averaged
and the k- model was used for turbulence closure.
This study adopted the Re-Normalization Group
(RNG) extension of k- model (Yakhot and
Orszag, 1986). The RNG k- model has been
shown by some workers to yield improvement
over the standard k- model for recirculating
flows and flows with strongly curving streamlines
(e.g., O’Shea and Fletcher, 1994; Pagageorgak
and Assanis, 1999, Ferreira et al., 2002) and is
often used in CFD for wind engineering problems
including the authors’ team (Stathopoulos, 2006;
Lam and To, 2006). Standard values were used
for model constants: C=0.0845, C1=1.42 and
C2=1.68. The flow equations and closure
equations were solved to obtain solutions of the
six flow variables, namely, pressure, three velocity
components, k and . The solution scheme made
use of the SIMPLEC algorithm (Van Doormaal and
Raithby, 1984) for pressure-velocity coupling and
the QUICK scheme (Leonard, 1979) for convective
transport modelling. To study vortex shedding,
unsteady solutions of the equations were sought.
It can always be criticised that compared with the
more advanced simulation by LES and DNS, the
unsteady RANS method cannot accurately
reproduce separated flow and vortex shedding.
However, the main focus of the present study is a
relative comparison between the features and
strengths of the two trains of vortices. With
quantitative data of the flow of secondary concern,
the more economical RANS computation was
acceptable to meet the objective of the study.
The two-dimensional flow was modelled with a
rectangular computational domain inside which a
circular cylinder of diameter D=10 cm or an
inclined flat plate of breadth B=15 cm was placed.
The width of the domain was 8D for the cylinder
flow and 5B for the inclined plate flow (Fig. 1).
The length of the domain was from 8D to 16D
or 6B to 14B, respectively. Uniform smooth flow
of air at velocity U entered the inlet of the
computational domain and all flow was made to
exit through the downstream end of domain. The
sides of the domains were set to permit no flow
across them. The surface of the cylinder or plate
was set as a solid wall with the no-slip condition
and the standard wall function. Time-dependent
solutions were sought at different times. We used
a time step of 1/20 of the expected vortex
571
shedding period. Truncation-induced flow
asymmetry in the computed flow is sufficient to
trigger initial instability and subsequent vortex
shedding in the solution and the solutions became
periodic after a few vortex shedding periods.
Convergence of the unsteady solutions was
normally achieved after about 3,000 iterations.
Grid dependence was studied through
computation of flow over a circular cylinder at
Re=1,000 using three sets of grids (Table 2). The
Reynolds number is Re=UD/, where  is the
kinematic viscosity of air. In each of the CFD
results, vortex shedding was modeled. The key
information of the flow, including the mean drag
coefficient, CD and the root-mean-square (rms)
lift coefficient, CL’ on the cylinder and the vortex
shedding frequency, in the form of Strouhal
number, St=fD/U, were calculated and used to
test grid independence. As shown in Table 2, the
coarser grid with 11,000 meshes was not
sufficiently fine for grid independence. The finer
grid with 97,000 meshes produced essentially the
same solutions of St, CD and CL’ as the standard
grid of 24,000 meshes. Thus, the standard grid
setting was judged to produce grid-independent
solutions.
In the standard grid setting for the circular
cylinder, the cylinder circumference was divided
into 120 grid points, as compared to 90 or 240,
respectively, in the coarser or finer grid. The inlet
or outlet of the computational domain was
divided into 120 meshes and the length into 160
meshes. For flow over the inclined plate, an even
denser computational mesh was used. There were
60 grid points on one face of the plate. The two-
dimensional computation meshes were shown in
Fig. 1. The numbers of grids on the end and side
faces of the computational domain were 160 and
360, respectively and the total number of meshes
was 62,000.
Fig. 1 Computational meshes for flow past inclined
flat plate. Total number of computational cells
=62103.
 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 4, No. 4 (2010)

3. VALIDATION CASES OF FLOW OVER
CIRCULAR CYLINDER
Validation of the present CFD approach is made
by carrying out computation at three values of Re,
Re=103, 104 and 105. This is achieved by
changing U. At the lowest Re, the flow is
computed assuming laminar flow. Fig. 2 shows
the computed vorticity contours for the vortex
shedding flow behind the cylinder at the two
lower Re, at the instants of peak lift in either
direction. For the turbulent flows, very similar
patterns are found at Re=105 as at Re=104, while
the laminar flow at Re=103 shows a wider wake.
Thus, results at the highest Re are not shown for
brevity. In all Re, the computed lift force on the
cylinder exhibits sinusoidal fluctuations at the
vortex shedding frequency. There is a
sinusoidally fluctuating component in the
computed drag force at double the vortex
shedding frequency. The values of St determined
from the lift curve have been listed in Table 2.
For the laminar flow at Re=103, the computed
value of St=0.23 is in reasonable agreement with
the experimental observations (Fey et al., 1998).
At the higher Re, much higher values of St are
computed and these depart more from the
experimental results. Table 2 also shows that
higher drag coefficients are found for the laminar
and lower Re turbulent flows.
We can also observe in Fig. 2 the effect of Re on
the vortex formation length. At Re=103, isolated
regions of vorticity concentration are detached
from the attached separation shear layer as shed
vortices at x/D1.5. The vortex formation length
at Re=104 or 105 is much longer at x/D2 to 2.5.
Vorticity contours in Fig. 2 are at the instants of
peak upward and downward lift. At these instants,
the two regions of vorticity concentration at two
sides of the cylinder are found to swing to their
extreme lateral positions. Nishimura and Yaniike
(2001) investigated experimentally the
relationship between vortex shedding and
generation of fluctuating lift and drag on a
circular cylinder. They suggested that shedding of
a vortex leads to a rotation of both separation
points on the cylinder surface away from the
cylinder side where the vortex is shed. Essentially,
the two shear layers are pushed to the other side
of the cylinder. This rotates the total force on the
cylinder from the alongwind direction towards
one side. The lateral component of the total force
leads to an increasing lift while the drag, being
the alongwind component, drops. Alternative
vortex shedding results in sideway oscillations of
the total fluid force about the mean flow direction
(Drescher, 1956; Norberg, 2003). The lift thus
oscillates at the vortex shedding frequency while
the drag fluctuates at twice that frequency. The
same sideways flipping of the shear layers is

Fig. 2 Computed vortex patterns at instants of peak upward and downward lift on circular cylinder. Re: (a) 103;
(b) 104. Left panels: peak upward lift; right panels: peak downward lift. Velocity vectors and contours of
non-dimensional vorticity shown at =D/U={±0.25, ±0.5, ±1, ±2, ±3, …}.

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 4, No. 4 (2010)

observed in our CFD results. In this case of a
cylinder wake, the fluid force is contributed by
suction pressure caused by fluid entrainment from
both shear layers. This is different from the
mechanism of lift production on an inclined plate
where the flow separation points are fixed to the
plate edges and the suction on the plate surface is
contributed almost entirely by the shear layer
from the leading edge of the plate. The details
will be discussed in the next section.
4. FLOW PAST INCLINED FLAT PLATE
Computation of flow past an inclined flat plate is
carried out at four angles of attack, =20o, 25o,
30o and 45o. The Reynolds number is
Re=UB/=2104, with the free-stream velocity at
2 m/s and B=15 cm. The Reynolds numbers of
our previous experimental studies are Re=3104
in Lam (1996) and Re=5.3103 in Lam and Leung
(2005). At all four values of , periodic vortex
shedding is computed. Fig. 3 shows the computed
vorticity fields at these four angles of attack at the
instants of maximum and minimum lift.
Alternating vortices of opposite senses are shed
from the plate in the form of a vortex street. The
sizes of the wake, vortices and the vortex street

Fig. 3 Computed vortex patterns of flow past inclined flat plate. Angle of attack, : (a) 20o; (b) 25o; (c) 30o;
(d) 45o. Left panels: maximum upward lift; right panels: minimum lift. Velocity vectors and contours of
non-dimensional vorticity shown at =B1/U={±0.2, ±0.5, ±1, ±2, ±3, …}.

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 4, No. 4 (2010)
4.0
3.5
CL   3.0
2.5
2.0
CD 1.5
CD
1.0
0.5
0.0
0 5 10 15 20
tU /B1
Fig. 4 Fluctuating lift and drag coefficients on
inclined flat plate. : solid line: 20o; broken
line: 25o; +: 30o; : 45o. CL=CD at =45o.
clearly scale with the projected plate width. In the
following sections, solutions of flow velocities,
vorticity and pressure at successive phases of a
vortex shedding cycle will be analysed to
investigate the shedding process of the vortices
and the relation to the oscillating lift.
4.1 Strouhal number, lift and drag
coefficients
The solution of the pressure field in the flow can
be used to compute the drag and lift forces on the
plate. For all four plates, there is a non-zero mean
lift plus a periodically fluctuating lift at the vortex
shedding frequency. As expected, the mean lift
force on the plate, or the lift coefficient based on
the constant plate width B, is found to increase
mildly with  (Table 1). For an inclined flat plate,
the projected plate width B1=B sin has been
shown to be a better characteristic length for the
wake (Fage and Johansen, 1927; Knisely, 1990;
also see Fig. 3). Thus, unless specified otherwise,
B1 is used to calculate the Strouhal number for
vortex shedding, St=fB1/U, and the lift (and drag)
coefficients, such as CL  FL ( 1 2 U  2 B1 ) (where
FL is the lift force on unit length of the plate).
Table 1 shows that the lift coefficient, based on
the projected plate width, exhibits lesser
variations with  than the lift force itself. It is
worth noting that CL increases with decrease in 
but the rms lift coefficient CL’ of the lift
fluctuations (based on B1) decreases as  becomes
smaller. When  decreases from 25o to 20o, CL’
drops by more than one half. This suggests that
the strength of the vortex street, say at =45o, is
much larger than that at, say =20o.
As the angle of attack becomes smaller, the wake
width becomes smaller and the vortices have
smaller length scales (Fig. 3). Thus, the vortex
shedding frequency, f, as determined from the
time history of the lift fluctuations, becomes
higher. This is shown by the value of fB/U in
Table 1. When scaled with the projected plate
width, the Strouhal number for vortex shedding
shows similar values at St0.17±0.005 for
different . Previous experiments found that St
has similar values near 0.15 for 30o and there is
a sharp increase in St at smaller  (Knisely, 1990).
Lam and Leung (2005) found that St=0.15 at
25 =25o and St=0.18 at =20o.
For the drag on the plate, the mean drag
coefficient is found to increase with  even when
the projected plate width is used to define the
coefficient. The rms drag coefficient is also
higher at larger . One notable observation about
the drag force is shown in Fig. 4. It is evident that
the drag oscillates at the vortex shedding
frequency just as the lift. This is in contrast to the
flow past a circular cylinder where the drag force
oscillates at twice the vortex shedding frequency
(which is also observed in our CFD results).
Furthermore, the fluctuations in drag and lift are
in phase, that is, the maximum drag occurs at the
same instant as the maximum lift. Fig. 4 also
shows that the fluctuating lift or drag starts to
develop a sub-harmonic when  increases to 30o
and this sub-harmonic is obviously observed at
=45o. An explanation for the above observations
will be suggested in the following section.
4.2 Vortex shedding process and fluctuating
lift production
Fig. 5 shows in details the flow past the inclined
plate at =30o at successive phases in one vortex
shedding cycle, starting and ending with the
instant of maximum lift on the plate. The
development of the clockwise-rotating vortex
from the trailing edge of the plate is relatively
simple as compared with the counterclockwise-
rotating vortex from the plate leading edge. Flow
separates from the trailing edge and the separation
shear layer rolls up into a vortex which grows on
being attached to the plate edge. The vortex
grows to maturity just before the instant of
maximum lift (Fig. 5(f)) and is then shed from the
plate trailing edge (Figs. 5(a) and (h)).
An important observation is that associated with
this shedding is the movement of the separation
shear layer from the plate leading edge towards
the plate. The shear layer originates from flow
separation at the leading edge and extends over
and beyond the plate length. As a new trailing
edge vortex grows, say, from Fig. 5(b) onwards,
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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 4, No. 4 (2010)

this separation shear layer from the plate leading
edge is observed to be pushed more away from
the upper surface of the plate. As the shear layer
entrains fluid and thus produces suction pressure
on the upper plate surface (Luo et al., 1994), its
outward movement leads to lower suction
pressure and consequently lower lift and drag
force on the plate. The minimum lift (and drag)
on the plate occurs at the instant between Figs.
5(c) and 5(d). After the instant of minimum lift,
the trailing edge vortex starts to move away from
the plate edge but remains attached to it. At the
same time, the middle part of the upper shear
layer starts to move towards the plate upper
surface and makes its way into the lower shear
layer. This increases the suction pressure on the
plate upper surface and raises the lift and drag.
Eventually, the upper shear layer intrudes into the
space between the plate trailing edge and the
trailing edge vortex. This breaks off the vortex
from its attachment to the plate trailing edge and
the lower shear layer, thus causing the vortex to
be shed in Fig. 5(h). This stage of vortex shedding
mechanism has been well documented for vortex
shedding from a bluff body (e.g., Cantwell and
Coles, 1983; Lam, 2009).
The formation and shedding of a vortex from the
leading edge can be observed from Fig. 5(a)
onwards. The vortex originates from the
separation shear layer at the plate leading edge
and it grows mainly in length. During the growth,
it moves downwards to trigger the shedding of the
trailing edge vortex (Fig. 5(a)) but it continues to
grow in length afterwards. In Fig. 5(b), a new
trailing edge vortex rolls up but the upper shear
layer continues to elongate. In Fig. 5(c), it extends

Fig. 5 Computed vorticity at successive phases of a vortex shedding cycle. Inclined flat plate at =30o. Phases
shown are in parts of a period of one shedding cycle from the instant of maximum lift. Velocity vectors and
vorticity contours shown at =B1/U={±0.25, ±0.5, ±0.75, ±1, ±1.25, …}.

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 4, No. 4 (2010)

to a length of almost 2B without showing any associated negative pressure region still cannot
eminent breaking. It is until some growth of the produce a noticeable force on the plate due to its
trailing edge vortex which is about to intrude into location at the plate trailing edge and thus
the elongated upper shear layer that the shear downstream of the plate (Fig. 6(d)). Instead, its
layer eventually breaks it into two parts (Figs. fluid circulation induces some reverse flow to hit
5(e)-(g)), with the detached part becoming a shed back onto the plate surface (Fig. 6(c)) and causes
leading edge vortex. The actual shedding of the some pressure recovery. The presence of the
leading edge vortex takes place not near the plate vortex also pushes the upper shear layer from the
edge but is at a location similar to that of the plate leading edge farther away from the plate.
trailing edge vortex. This is in agreement with the The upper plate surface is thus under low negative
experimental findings of Lam and Leung (2005) pressure, leading to the smallest normal force on
and the LES simulation of Breuer et al. (2003). the plate. Fig. 6 suggests that the flow and
Lam and Leung (2005) discussed that for the pressure on the lower side of the plate do not
development and shedding of the leading edge experience large changes during a cycle of vortex
vortex, the upper surface of the inclined plate acts shedding.
like an after body part of a bluff body and thus the
shedding location is not from the fixed separation
point of the plate leading edge. On the contrary,
the plate surface has a much weaker effect on the
development of the trailing edge vortex and the
singular plate edge condition leads to a simpler
shedding location. This discussion is supported by
the present CFD result in Fig. 5. It should,
however, be noted that the actual formation of the
leading edge vortex involves large-scale flow
separation which cannot be well modelled by the
present RANS computation. The LES simulation
of Breuer et al. (2003) showed a more complex
process but the focus of this study is on the vortex
street downwards and the production of fluid
force.
Fig. 6 shows the computed flow and distributions
of pressure coefficient above the inclined plate at
the instants of maximum and minimum lift. It is
evident that the maximum lift occurs when the
trailing edge is shed from the plate trailing edge
(Figs. 6(a) and (b)). Although the vortex is
associated with negative pressure (suction), its
location is completely downstream of the plate
such that the negative pressure does not
contribute to fluid force on the plate. Instead, the
upper separation shear layer from the plate
leading edge moves to the closest distance from
the upper plate surface. The region above the
plate is entirely under the effect of this shear layer
which entrains air from the region. There is
recirculating flow in this region with uniformly
negative pressure. This produces the largest Fig. 6 Computer flow vectors and pressure
normal force on the plate within the vortex distribution around inclined flat plate at
shedding cycle. Since both the plate lift and drag =30o. (a) instant of maximum lift;
are components of this force, they reach their (b) instant of minimum lift. Contours of
maximum values together (Fig. 4). pressure coefficient shown at Cp={±0.2, ±0.4,
±0.6, …}. Solid contours for negative
About half a cycle later, the next trailing edge
pressure; broken contours for positive
vortex grows to maturity. Being remained pressure.
attached to the plate, it occupies the largest area
above the trailing edge of the plate. However, the

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 4, No. 4 (2010)
6 by a constant adjustment factor of value 2. The
: Trailing edge vortex.
▲: leading edge vortex.
Solid symbols: present CFD data.
Open symbols: PIV data of Lam and
Leung (2005) with adjustment.
4
'
2 the CFD data and experimental data to similar
0
0 4 8 12
x/B'
Fig. 7 Magnitudes of peak vorticity levels of leading
and trailing edge vortices behind inclined flat
plate at =30o.
Fig. 4 shows that at the largest 30o, the lift (and
drag) experiences a short reduction after it reaches
the maximum. It have been discussed in Fig. 5
that the production of fluctuating normal force on
the upper plate surface is affected by the sideways
swaying movement of the upper separation shear
layer in relation to the growth and shedding of the
trailing edge vortex. At =30o (Fig. 5) and
smaller values of  (Fig. 3), the movement of the
upper shear layer does not appear to reach the
plate surface even in the extreme instant of its
intrusion into the lower shear layer to shed the
trailing edge vortex. However, the CFD results
for =45o (e.g., Fig. 3) suggest that upon
shedding of the trailing edge vortex, the intrusion
of the upper shear layer does reach the
downstream part of the upper plate surface. It is
believed that there is some partial pressure
recovery associated with this flow hitting the
plate surface and this is responsible for the sub-
harmonic variation in the lift curve at =45o (Fig.
4).
4.3 Strengths of vortices in vortex street
One objective of the present CFD study is to
provide evidence to the experimental observations
of Lam and Leung (2005) that the trailing edge
vortices possesses higher vorticity levels than the
leading edge vortices at the same axial locations.
Fig. 7 shows the magnitudes of peak vorticity
inside the leading and trailing edge vortices in Fig.
5 plotted against the axial locations of the vortex
centres after shedding. The computed non-
dimensional vorticity, =B1/U, is shown in the
figure. It is evident that the CFD results also show
higher peak vorticity levels for the trailing edge
vortex. The experimental data of (x) are
included in Fig. 7 but they have been multiplied
577
unsteady RANS solutions exhibit almost perfectly
periodic flow patterns but jitter among cycles was
present due to random turbulent fluctuations in
the experiments. The jitter resulted in reduced
values of the phase-averaged peak vorticity levels.
This is why an adjustment is necessary to bring
levels. The lower peak vorticity levels in the
experimental data are also believed to be caused
by the much larger spatial resolution of the
velocity vector data from PIV as compared to
those in the fine computational grid.
Notwithstanding this adjustment, the two sets of
data show very similar trends of vorticity change
with axial distance. The CFD results for the plate
inclined at other values of  show the same
observation of different strengths between the two
trains of vortices. The details are not shown for
brevity.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The vortex shedding flow past an inclined flat
plate at Re=2104 is simulated with unsteady
RANS computation. The primary objective is to
provide evidence to the previous experimental
finding of two trains of unequal-strength vortices
behind a flat plate at high incidence (Lam, 1996;
Lam and Leung, 2005). Computation is
performed at four values of =20o, 25o, 30o and
45o and vortex shedding in the form of a vortex
street is observed from each edge of the inclined
plate. The global features of the wake from the
computational results are in agreement with
previous experimental investigation. These
include Strouhal number and the scaling of
vortices and wake on the projected plate width.
The computed vorticity field shows different
formation and shedding stages between the
vortices from the leading edge and the trailing
edge of the plate. While these main findings are in
agreement with the experiments, the additional
information of flow-induced pressure and force in
the CFD results shows the relationship between
vortex shedding and the generation of fluctuating
lift and drag forces on the plate. The trailing edge
vortex develops from the rollup of the separation
shear layer at the plate trailing edge. Although it
remains attached to the plate during its growth, it
does not contribute much to the fluid force on the
plate due to its location downstream of the plate.
The fluctuating force on the plate is largely
caused by the pressure on the upper plate surface
which is governed by the location, length and
fluid entrainment of the upper shear layer from
 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 4, No. 4 (2010)
the plate leading edge. These activities of the
upper shear layer are found to exhibit
interrelationship with the growth of the trailing
edge vortex. The maximum lift occurs during the
shedding of the trailing edge vortex when the
upper shear layer moves closest to the plate to
trigger the shedding. On the other hand, when the
trailing edge vortex grows to maturity but remains
attached to the plate, the upper shear layer is
pushed farthest away from the plate and the plate
is under the minimum lift.
The CFD results provide support to the
experimental observation that the leading edge
vortex is formed from a break off of the upper
shear layer. The actual shedding location is near
the trailing end of the plate. A comparison
between the computed peak vorticity levels at the
vortex centres shows again that at the same
downstream locations, the trailing edge vortex has
higher vorticity levels that the leading edge vortex.
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APPENDIX

In April 2010, a Chinese bulk carrier ran aground

near the Great Barrier Reef and caused oil spill
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Great_Barrier
_Reef_oil_spill). It is interested to note that the
flow of ocean current past the stranded ship on
the sea surface bears close resemblance to the
flow over an inclined plate. The flow was clearly
visualized by the 3.7 km length of leaked oil slick
and detergents. There are video clips on the
patterns from the above quoted webpage and a
photograph is reproduced here in Fig. A. One can
clearly observe the difference between the masses
contained within the leading edge vortices and the
trailing edge vortices.

Fig. A Oil slick pattern from a stranded ship.

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