An Experimental Study of Surface-Mounted Bluff Bodies Immersed in Deep Turbulent Boundary Layers

This paper reports an experimental study conducted to investigate the effects of aspect ratio on the reattachment length and statistical properties in turbulent flow over three-dimensional surface-mounted bluff bodies. This study focuses on a surface-mounted body whose height is significantly smaller than the thickness of the approaching turbulent boundary layer. The studied aspect ratios of the step range from w/h = 0.5 to 20, where w and h denote the spanwise width and height of the step, respectively. All experiments were carried out in an open water channel, and the velocity measurements were performed using a time-resolved particle image velocimetry (TR-PIV) system. The Reynolds number, based on the freestream of the approach boundary layer and step height, is 12540, while the ratio of the boundary layer to step height is 4.83. Two distinct regions of separation are observed on top of the step and downstream of the step. In both separation regions, the reattachment length increases monotonically as aspect ratio increases from w/h = 0.5 to 8, and the reattachment length reaches an asymptotic value and does not vary significantly with aspect ratio larger than 8. The effects of aspect ratios on the mean velocities and Reynolds stresses were also examined.