Quantifying the effect of Rotation on 2D Ellipsoids using Nonconforming Schwarz-SEM*

Vortex shedding and the related added-mass effect’s impact on drag and lift felt by rotating spherical and ellipsoidal bodies moving in flows at moderate Reynolds numbers has been recently quantified using a novel moving nonconforming Schwarz-spectral element method, which consists of two overlapping computational domains. The study showed that rotation has a significant effect on drag and lift on the ellipsoids, which isn't captured by static simulations that only account for angle of attack of the body. In the current study we used 2D direct numerical simulations (DNS) to quantify the effect of Reynolds numbers, nondimensional angular velocities, and the ellipsoid’s aspect ratio. We conduct 2D DNS because they are computationally cheaper than 3D DNS, and appropriate for a wide parametric sweep. The results are compared with 3D DNS reported in Mittal et al., potential flow solutions, and empirical relationships from the literature. DMD analysis is also conducted on the velocity data to identify the dynamically important modes.