Concept

Keulegan–Carpenter number — where it appears

The ratio of how far an oscillating flow carries the fluid in one cycle to the size of the body it passes, its velocity amplitude times the period over the diameter. It decides whether a wake has time to form before the flow reverses, and so whether drag or inertia dominates the force.

Named by 2 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

Two forces on one cylinder, a quarter of a cycle apart. The inertia and drag terms of Morison's equation over one wave period, at a Keulegan-Carpenter number of ten. The inertia term follows the acceleration and peaks where the velocity is zero; the drag term follows the velocity and peaks where the acceleration is. They are a quarter of a cycle apart and they are different kinds of quantity.

Two forces, and only one of them remembers

Morison's equation adds an inertia term to a drag term and is usually presented as an empirical patch. It is not: the two terms are two different kinds of memory, one a function of the present acceleration and one a function of the wake left by the previous half cycle.

regimes · Keulegan–Carpenter number

Below separation Morison's drag coefficient is a Stokes layer's, and it grows without limit as the motion shrinks. Wang's drag coefficient for a circular cylinder in an attached oscillatory flow against the Keulegan–Carpenter number, for β of 10², 10³, 10⁴ and 10⁵, each drawn up to Hall's onset of the Honji instability. β = 10²: 2.77 at KC = 1, onset at KC 1.83; β = 10³: 0.845 at KC = 1, onset at KC 1.03; β = 10⁴: 0.264 at KC = 1, onset at KC 0.578; β = 10⁵: 0.0831 at KC = 1, onset at KC 0.325. At fixed β the coefficient falls as 1/KC.

Below separation a cylinder's drag is a Stokes layer, and KC stops deciding the force

Morison's equation splits the force on a cylinder in an oscillating flow into inertia and drag, and the Keulegan–Carpenter number says which dominates — once the flow separates and leaves a wake. Below that, nothing separates, and the drag term describes the thin oscillating boundary layer on the cylinder's surface. Its coefficient then grows without limit as the motion shrinks, as one over the Keulegan–Carpenter number, and that exactly cancels the number's power to decide anything: the drag's share of the force is fixed by the frequency parameter alone, a few per cent at most, until Honji's instability ends the regime.

regimes · Keulegan–Carpenter number

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Added mass Regime Unsteady flow Dissipation Drag Drag coefficient Matched asymptotics Measurement Memory kernel Model limit Model validity Offshore

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