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I am getting into computational fluid dynamics (CFD). One of my professors mentioned that a cylindrical wake would be a good starting point to learn about turbulence modelling when using CFD software. I'm not a native speaker, so I googled

cylindrical wake CFD

but the results confuse me (also the translations of my dictionary). How is wake defined in the context of CFD and what is a good resource to read up on it?

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  • $\begingroup$ The wake is just the fluid effects behind the cyclinder. I don't believe there is a rigorous definition for it. If you image search for cylinder cfd, you will see plots of several different flow regimes that would hopefully help you get a feel for what he is refering to. $\endgroup$ – Godric Seer May 16 '13 at 15:18
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, doing this finally lead me to the Wikipedia entry on wake, which even contains something like a definition. $\endgroup$ – seb May 16 '13 at 15:57
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The two comments above are good for the definition of a wake, but in the case of the flow around the cylinder in 2D, the von Karman vortex street is the canonical problem that your professor was talking about.

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  • $\begingroup$ awesome! thank you, that was exactly what he drew on the white board! $\endgroup$ – seb May 16 '13 at 20:50

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