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Study of Various Mesh Strategies for Flow over a Square Cylinder using
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Article  in  AIP Conference Proceedings · November 2020

DOI: 10.1063/5.0025201

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Study of various mesh strategies for flow
over a square cylinder using OpenFOAM®
Cite as: AIP Conference Proceedings 2277, 230001 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0025201
Published Online: 06 November 2020

Aravind Satheesh Kumar, Anugya Singh, Nikhil Gaur, and Kannan B. T.

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© 2020 Author(s).
 Study of Various Mesh Strategies for Flow over a Square
Cylinder using OpenFOAM®
Aravind Satheesh Kumar1, a), Anugya Singh1, b), Nikhil Gaur1, c) and Kannan B T 1, d)
1
Department of Aerospace Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Kancheepuram
District – 603203, Tamil Nadu, India.
a)
askerp001@gmail.com, b) anu2riks@gmail.com, c) nikhil_gaur@srmuniv.edu.in,
d)
Corresponding author: skyinventorbt@gmail.com

Abstract. Studies of flow over a square cylinder have been worked upon extensively, not to just understand the flow
physics but also the forces that act on the body and the reactions that the body experiences. Inspired by the past studies,
this work focuses on the computational aspect of it. The amount of dependency of results on the meshes is very well
known, therefore, both the problems were combined together to study several mesh strategies for flow over a square
shaped cylinder. Three meshes were designed and calculation were carried out using RANS Navier Stokes Equation. The
best strategy was then chosen and grid independence study was done. The best mesh was then selected and the flow
visualization work was carried out. All the numerical simulations were done using open-source software package
OpenFOAM®.

INTRODUCTION

Square shaped Aerodynamical structures are the most common these days. Their stability is therefore very
crucial to study in order to maintain a strong and safe structure. The flow around them is one of those major parts
that determines the stability due to flow separation and vortex formation, which can undermine its strength. To
understand this properly, several experiments and computational analysis, on various shapes and orientation of
cylinders, were conducted. This not just provided results about such structures but also helped in studying the
vortices that are formed. To understand this, Franke et. al. [1] worked on circular as well square cylinders where the
Reynolds number was varied such that Re ≤ 5000 and Re ≤ 300 respectively. The square cylinder was placed inside
a rectangular domain of length 20D and width 12D with an upstream length of 4.5D, where D is square edge length.
For circular cylinder, a circular domain of radius of 20D was provided where D is the diameter. Non-uniform grids
were created with constant expansion factor, grid dependency was studied as the shedding frequencies sometimes
are found to be too high if the near wall mesh is very coarse, therefore a distance of ywall/D ≈ 0.004 and ywall/D ≈
0.001 for square and circular domains were set respectively. A modified version of Program TEACH was used for
solving equations and SIMPLEC predictor-Corrector algorithm was used to couple the continuity and momentum
equations. Finite volume method along with unsteady 2D Navier Stokes equation was used for calculations. While
studying the flow it was found that at sudden acceleration of flow, lead to a greater time for stabilizing the flow,
hence if the flow velocity was increased slowly, it led to lower computational time, stabilizing the flow earlier. At
Reynolds number 200 the square cylinder was seen to give results with a strouhal number of 0.157, total drag
coefficient 1.60, drag coefficient due to pressure as 1.65, drag coefficient due to friction -0.05, total lift coefficient ±
0.62, lift coefficient due to pressure as ± 0.57, lift coefficient due to friction ± 0.005 and an eddy size of 2.20. These
results were in good agreement with the provided data for lower Reynolds number where as the results were seen to
be varying.
Sohankar et. al. [2] investigated the flow over a 2D unsteady flow, in the Reynolds number range of 45 to 250
around a square cylinder, in order to maintain a laminar flow. The blockage provided was 5% and the simulations
were carried out with a non-staggered grid arrangement. Calculations were done using incompressible SIMPLEC

1st International Conference on Mathematical Techniques and Applications

AIP Conf. Proc. 2277, 230001-1–230001-9; https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0025201
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-4007-4/$30.00

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finite volume code. For convective terms, third order QUICK and second order Van Leer scheme were used. The
results showed that the vortex shedding was visible at Re = 50 to 55 giving a fully developed flow regime after Re =
55. At Re = 100 the blockage effect was seen as an effective increase in the oncoming free stream velocity. Further
on, Sohankar et. al. [3] created a 2D and 3D rigid square prism for analyzing the flow. The Reynold number range
was kept from 200 to 500. For 3D the Cartesian coordinates were used such that z-axis was parallel to the cylinder
axis and x-axis was parallel to direction of the inlet flow. A non-staggered grid arrangement with incompressible
finite volume code based on fractional step technique was used along with a second order Crank-Nicolson scheme.
Convective boundary conditions were used along with no slip condition over the cylinder body surface. While
studying the results it was found that in the process of early transition of wake that is Re=200 to 250, a pulsation in
force components was visible which was not the case for Re=500. Hence, to study this phenomenon in detail the
force levels were defined as HF (High Force) and LF (Low Force) levels. While comparing 2D and 3D results it was
found that, the time-mean flow patterns in 2D were symmetric till Re ≥ 300 but not for 400 and 500 whereas for 3D,
the flow was found to be symmetric. Both the results also had a drastic difference in the values of the data provided;
hence, the results provided by 2D were seen to be inaccurate as the structure of the flow in the span wise direction
was found to be missing.
To understand square cylinder problem in a different way, Cheng et. al. [4] studied a 2D square cylinder having an
incompressible linear shear flow using Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). The Reynolds number was varied from
50 to 200 with a variation of shear rate from 0 to 0.5, hence the change in vortex shedding frequency due to the
effect of shear rate was studied. The viscosity of the fluid was given as ν = 0.01 and the velocity was maintained
between 0.01 to 0.04 eventually maintaining the value of Mach number to be less than 1 and Knudsen number less
than 0.01. The LBM method originally created a computational mesh using a uniform lattice but it had limitations in
places where a large gradient is visible within a small computational domain, however the authors decoupled the
computational mesh from the lattice, improving the computational efficiency. The whole simulation was solved
within three steps namely collision step, streaming step and interpolation step. The results indicated that if the
maximum mesh size to the lattice size ratio was maintained less than 5, they were found to be satisfactorily accurate.
At Re=200, suppressed vortex street with periodic vortex shedding was seen as the shear rate increased. Strouhal
number was found to be 0.15, coefficient of drag as 1.45 and coefficient of lift RMS as 0.372. In general, as Re and
K were seen to be increasing the drag and lift forces on the cylinder were seen to be decreasing and the decreasing
rate was maximum for drag coefficient for shear rates, 0.15<K<0.3. Gera et. al. [5] worked on another such problem
of analyzing a 2D unsteady flow, past a square cylinder on the Reynolds Number ranging from 50 to 250 to keep the
flow laminar. They created a geometry with a height of the computational domain as 18, extent of domain upstream
and downstream of the body as 8.5 and 17 respectively, and a blockage of 5.5%. Convective boundary conditions
were applied. The staggered grid arrangement along with incompressible SIMPLE finite volume code was used. For
time, Crank-Nicholson scheme of second order was used and for convective and diffusive terms, the second order
scheme was used. The mesh was created uniformly with a constant cell size, which was 0.15 downstream of the
body, and 0.25 in all the other parts. The distance from the nearest grid point to the cylinder surface was kept as
0.004 upstream surface, 0.006 on the side surface and 0.008 on the downstream surface. They found that up to 50
Reynolds number the flow is steady and between 50 to 55, vortex shedding occurs as flow becomes unsteady. At
Reynold no 200, the strouhal number was found to be 0.143, total drag coefficient 1.487, pressure drag coefficient
1.540, RMS lift coefficient 0.329, surface averaged frontal side pressure coefficient 0.828, surface averaged
top/bottom side pressure coefficient -1.320, base pressure coefficient at centerline -1.205 and stagnation pressure
coefficient at centerline 1.125.
Subhankar et. al. [6] worked on determining the variation of separation angle with respect to Reynolds number.
Analysis were carried out for square, elliptical and circular cylinders. The analysis was studied for a Reynolds
Number of less than or equal to 150. A rectangular domain was created such that the width was kept as 100D
providing a blockage of 0.01 and the length as 180D where 80D was upstream and 100D was downstream length, D
being the length of the edge of the square cylinder. The mesh was created containing five blocks, the central block
consisted of the cylinder and the other four were neighboring the central one on all the sides creating a rectangular
outer domain. A non-uniform, multi-block finite-element mesh was created such that to reduce the effects of corner
singularity, a distance of 0.001D was provided to the nodes right next to the sharp corners in x and y directions.
Khademinezhad et. al. [7] compared the flow over a square cylinder with the flow over a circular cylinder. The
geometry was made such the length was taken to be 50D and width as 20D where D is the edge length for square
and diameter for circular cylinder. The upstream length was provided as 20D and downstream as 30D. The analysis
was carried out using commercial Fluent software for solving the equations and the results were studied at a Re =

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100 over a period at t = 5, 10, 15 and 20 and hence at Re = 75 to 150. It was found that as the time increased, the
vortices created were seen to be increasing and as the Reynolds number increased, the lift coefficient increased
considerably. Karthikeyan et al [8] covered a similar topic by carrying out analysis over a circular cylinder but with
a different approach, they studied the vortex formation and shedding by injecting a jet at the stagnation point present
on the rear side of the cylinder. The simulation was carried out at a Reynolds number of 150 and Injection Ratios
(IR) were varied from 0.5 to 7. Power Spectral Density method was used to study the frequencies at different IR and
the dependence of them for suppression of these vortices. This method was seen as a really good example providing
a future scope of work that can be carried out on these cases.
All this literature was studied so that the scope of the present work could be determined. Therefore, the present work
focuses on analyzing flow over a square cylinder for 2D simulations at Reynolds number 200 where different mesh
strategies are used to find the best strategy that could give accurate results. The flow is kept to be laminar and the
domain is designed such that the flow is unbound.

COMPUTATIONAL METHODOLOGY

Geometry & Meshing

The square of the geometry was created such that the edge length D was given as 2mm. The domain was
designed such that the length was taken as 30D and the width as 20D as shown in Fig 1.

FIGURE 1. Geometry of the domain with the square cylinder

The upstream was set as 10D and the downstream as 19D and vertically, the square was placed at the center of the
vertical length. Three mesh strategies were designed as shown in Fig 2, where the First Mesh Strategy (M1) was
created such that the domain was divided into several squares and rectangles and all the subparts were meshed as
presented in Fig 3. In the Second Mesh Strategy (M2), the domain was divided into four triangles and a rectangle
and the mesh was created as shown in Fig 4 and in Third Mesh Strategy (M3) was designed to be a combination of
the first two strategies.

FIGURE 2. M1, M2 and M3 Mesh Strategies respectively

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 FIGURE 3. Complete Mesh and zoomed in image of domain of M1.

FIGURE 4. Complete Mesh and zoomed in image of domain of M2.

FIGURE 5. Complete Mesh and zoomed in image of domain of M3.

Governing Equations

The ‘pisoFoam’ solver was used for simulation of flow over a 2D square geometry; it works on PISO (Pressure
Implicit with Splitting of Operators) algorithm, which is a transient solver for incompressible turbulent flows. Since,
the focus of the present work is limited to the laminar regime, the turbulence model was set to ‘laminar’. The
continuity and momentum equations governing the incompressible flow physics are given as follows [9]:
( )
+ =0 (1)

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 ( )
+ = − + + (2)

Where, ρ: Density, t: Time, : Volume forces, : Velocity, x: Space Variable, i, j: Tensor Indices.

Boundary Conditions

Table 1 shows the boundary condition assigned to each side/face:

TABLE 1. Boundary Conditions
Face Name Boundary Condition
Inlet Patch (Velocity inlet)
Outlet Patch (Pressure outlet)
Top and Bottom symmetryPlane
Front and Back Empty
Square Body Wall (noSlip)

The input for the inlet velocity for a Reynolds Number of 200 was calculated using the following formula given in
Equation 3.

Re = (3)

Where ν: Kinematic Viscosity of air (1.48 x 10-5 m2/s); D: Characteristic dge Length (2 mm); V: Inlet Velocity
(m/s). To keep the courant number under the limit, each simulation had a time step of 0.001 sec.

RESULTS & DISCUSSION

Initial analyses were carried out to understand the results provided by different mesh strategies that were used
using Paraview. It was found that the case M1 predicted the result most accurately amongst all the three cases as
shown in Table 2 with an error percentage of 7.52% for CL (RMS) and 2.66% for Strouhal number. As can be seen in
Fig 6, the amplitude for M2 and M3 are more as compared to M1 and the similar is the case with Fig 7, hence the
cases M2 and M3 have over predicted the results. This deviation could be due to the orthogonal nature of the grid
around the surface of the cylinder in the case M1, which allowed for better numerical stabilization in the solvers
leading to better results. Thus, M1 was used for further analyses.
TABLE 2. Comparison of mesh strategies
Mesh Strategy Case CL (RMS) CD (AVG) St
M1 0.40 1.47 0.154
M2 0.48 1.53 0.145
M3 0.47 1.53 0.150
Franke et. al. - 1.60 0.157
Cheng et. al. 0.372 1.45 0.15

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FIGURE 6. Coefficient of Lift comparison for the three Mesh Strategies.

FIGURE 7. Coefficient of Drag comparison for the three Mesh Strategies.

FIGURE 8. Grid independence study using Coefficient of Lift

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 FIGURE 9. Grid independence study using Coefficient of Drag

Once M1 mesh strategy was compared and selected, a grid independence study was carried out. Three types of
grids were made keeping the selected Mesh as medium one and the results were compared as shown in Figure 8 and
9. It was observed that, the coarse grid overpredicted the results as compared to medium and finer grids, as both of
them gave the same result. As can be seen in Table 3, coarse mesh provided values with an error percentage of
15.59% which is more than the limit, therefore, the medium mesh was selected as it best suited for further analyses
to save computational time and resources as well as providing accurate result.

TABLE 3. Comparison of different grid sizes

Grid Independence Case CL (RMS) CD (AVG) St
Coarse 0.43 1.48 0.150
Medium 0.40 1.47 0.154
Fine 0.40 1.47 0.154

After the quantitative study, Lin Integral Convolution (LIC) Visualizations were carried to understand the flow
behavior at Re 200. It can be seen from Figure 10, as the flow begins initially there are two symmetrical wake
formations behind the square. As the time progresses, the size of these wake also increases. As seen at t=2.5secs the
size of the wake increases and at t=3.2secs, the vortices start the shedding process, where the lower wake starts
dissipating. At t = 3.8 secs, the upper wake grows in order to dissipate alternately and hence the flow enters the
transitional phase. With the increase in time the shedding increases as seen from t=3.8secs to t=5secs and reaches a
uniform shedding processes at t=11secs. After which the shedding process becomes uniform with every cycle with
vortices shedding alternately.

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FIGURE 10. LIC visualization at Re = 200.

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 CONCLUSION

A square cylinder was analyzed for different Mesh Strategies at a Reynolds Number of 200. The Mesh strategy
which gave the most accurate results within the error limits, was then chosen to be analyzed for grid independence
studies, while doing this, it was found that the course mesh over predicted the results, and the medium and fine mesh
gave accurately equal results, therefore taking computational efficiency into account, the medium mesh was chosen
for further studies. The flow was visualized using Lin Integral Convolution (LIC) Visualizations and the results were
obtained which were in great agreement with the already existing data.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors acknowledge the usage of Advanced Computing Laboratory (ACL), Department of Aerospace
Engineering at SRMIST for the simulations performed towards the present research work.

REFERENCES
1. R. Franke, W. Rodi, and B. Schönung, “Numerical calculation of laminar vortex-shedding flow past
cylinders,” Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, vol. 35, pp. 237–257, January 1990.
2. A. Sohankar, L. Davidson, C. Norberg, “Numerical Simulation of unsteady flow around a square two-
dimensional cylinder”, Twelfth Australasian Fluid Mechanics Conference, 1995.
3. A. Sohankar and L. Davidson, “Numerical Simulation of Flow Past a Square Cylinder”, Proceedings of
FEDSM99-7172, 1999
4. M. Cheng, D. S. Whyte, and J. Lou, “Numerical simulation of flow around a square cylinder in uniform-shear
flow,” Journal of Fluids and Structures, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 207–226, 2007
5. B. Gera, P. K. Sharma, and R. K. Singh, “CFD analysis of 2D unsteady flow around a square cylinder,”
International Journal of Applied Engineering Research, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 602–610, 2010.
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Methods in Fluids, Vol.67, Issue 9 (1160-1174), 2011.
7. T. Khademinezhad, P. Talebizadeh, and H. Rahimzadeh, “Numerical Study of Unsteady Flow around a Square
Cylinder in Compare with Circular Cylinder,” Conference Paper, February, 2015.
8. S.Karthikeyan, S Senthilkumar, B T Kannan and U Chandrasekhar, “Numerical Analysis on Effect of Jet
Injection on Vortex Shedding for Flow Over a Circular Cylinder”, Arabian Journal for Science and
Engineering, Volume 44, Issue 2 (1475–1488), February, 2019.
9. Information on https://www.cfdsupport.com/OpenFOAM-Training-by-CFD-Support/node1.html. (OpenFOAM
Training module by CFD Support)

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