Numerical and Experimental Study of the Rotational Behaviour of Flat Plates Falling Freely with Periodic Oscillating Motion

When a flat plate falls freely in periodic oscillating motion regime, unsteady fluid forces create additional lift force contributions due to the rotational behaviour. Computational fluid dynamics is used to simulate the free fall behaviour of a flat plate with aspect ratio β = 20 falling in two-dimensional flow with Reynolds number Re ≈ 10,000 and non-dimensional moment of inertia I* = 0.115. To validate the free fall trajectory obtained by computational fluid dynamics, video recordings are used. Based on the validated free fall computational fluid dynamics simulation, the instantaneous fluid forces and torques on the plate are obtained.

The validated simulations show significant deviations in per-pendicular and tangential force coefficients at the same angle of attack depending on the trajectory history of the plate. At low angles of attack below 5 deg, the tangential force differs significantly. Oppositely, the difference in the perpendicular force is most pronounced at high angles of attack. During a free fall, the angle of attack is below 5 deg in 70 % of the time. Furthermore, the angle of attack is only above 45 deg in less than 5 % of the time. Therefore, effort must be put into a more detailed description of the tangential force component, in order to improve the existing modelling framework for non-spherical particles.