Drag reduction in flow over a two-dimensional bluff body with a blunt trailing edge using a new passive device

In this paper, we present a new passive control device for form-drag reduction in flow over a two-dimensional bluff body with a blunt trailing edge. The device consists of small tabs attached to the upper and lower trailing edges of a bluff body to effectively perturb a two-dimensional wake. Both a wind-tunnel experiment and large-eddy simulation are carried out to examine its drag-reduction performance. Extensive parametric studies are performed experimentally by varying the height and width of the tab and the spanwise spacing between the adjacent tabs at three Reynolds numbers of $\hbox{\it Re}\,{=}\,u_\infty h/\nu\,{=}\,20\,000$, 40 000 and 80 000, where $u_\infty$ is the free-stream velocity and $h$ is the body height. For a wide parameter range, the base pressure increases (i.e. drag reduces) at all three Reynolds numbers. Furthermore, a significant increase in the base pressure by more than 30% is obtained for the optimum tab configuration. Numerical simulations are performed at much lower Reynolds numbers of $\hbox{\it Re}\,{=}\,320$ and 4200 to investigate the mechanism responsible for the base-pressure increase by the tab. Results from the velocity measurement and numerical simulations show that the tab introduces the spanwise mismatch in the vortex-shedding process, resulting in a substantial reduction of the vortical strength in the wake and significant increases in the vortex formation length and wake width.