A review of recent experiments on the flow past circular cylinders

Abstract The flow around circular cylinders still is one of the challenges in fluid mechanics. Moreover, it is of great interest for practical applications, such as wind loads on cylindrical structures. For the two-dimensional problem in a uniform flow, research since the beginning of this century has produced a good if still incomplete insight into the phenomena. This does not apply, if three-dimensionality, and in particular freestream turbulence and shear of the flow are included in the consideration. For these more general but also more significant conditions a large amount of work remains to be done.