Numerical investigation of laminar vortex shedding applying a discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element method

Two-dimensional vortex sheddings in the wakes of a circular cylinder and a NACA 0012 airfoil are numerically investigated by applying a discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DG). The fluid flow is assumed to be laminar and incompressible. The in-house code BoSSS, in which the projection scheme of Karniadakis et al. (1991) is implemented, is employed for performing the numerical simulations. In order to validate and assess this new approach, it has been applied to several generic flow configurations (i.e., flow past a cylinder, flow over an airfoil). For the cylinder, the flow for the low Reynolds numbers up to 100 is considered and the onset of vortex shedding is investigated. For the airfoil, the Strouhal numbers are computed for low to moderate angles of attack. The computed flow patterns around the airfoil are in a good agreement with the available experimental and numerical data.