Effect of viscoelasticity on two-dimensional laminar vortex shedding in flow past a rotating cylinder

In this work, we numerically investigate the effect of viscoelasticity on 2D laminar vortex dynamics in flows past a single rotating cylinder for rotational rates $0{\leq}{\alpha}{\leq}5$ (the rotational rate ex is defined by the ratio of the circumferential rotating velocity to free stream velocity) at Re=100, in which the vortex shedding has been predicted to occur in literature for Newtonian fluids. The objective of the present research is to develop a promising technique to fully suppress the vortex shedding past a bluff body by rotating a cylinder and controlling fluid elasticity. The predicted vortex dynamics with the present method is consistent with the previous works for Newtonian flows past a rotating cylinder. We also verified our method by comparing our data with the literature in the case of viscoelastic flow past a non-rotating cylinder. For $0{\leq}{\alpha}{\leq}1.8$, the frequency of vortex shedding slightly decreases but the fluctuation of drag and lift coefficient significantly decreases with increasing fluid elasticity. We observe that the vortex shedding of viscoelastic flow disappears at lower ${\alpha}$ than the Newtonian case. At ${\alpha}$=5, the relationship between the frequency of vortex shedding and Weissenberg number (Wi) is predicted to be non-monotonic and have a minimum around Wi=0.25. The vortex shedding finally disappears over critical Wi number. The present results suggest that the vortex shedding in the flow around a rotating cylinder can be more effectively suppressed for viscoelastic fluids than Newtonian fluids.