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Simulating tornado-like flows: the effect of the simulator’s geometry

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Abstract

Within the wind engineering community, a series of physical simulators of differing geometries have been used to investigate the flow-field of tornado-like vortices. This paper examines the influence that the geometry of a simulator can have on the generated flow field. Surface pressure and velocity data have been measured for two swirl ratios (S = 0.30 and S = 0.69) in two different simulators of different scale and varying geometry. The results of this research suggest that far from being a mature research field, there are still many unresolved questions that need to be addressed before data obtained from such simulators can be used with confidence in practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

    S. Gillmeier, M. Sterling & H. Hemida

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  1. S. Gillmeier
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  2. M. Sterling
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  3. H. Hemida
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Correspondence to S. Gillmeier.

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Gillmeier, S., Sterling, M. & Hemida, H. Simulating tornado-like flows: the effect of the simulator’s geometry. Meccanica 54, 2385–2398 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11012-019-01082-4

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