THE PLANE WAKE OF A CYLINDER - AN ESTIMATE OF THE PRESSURE STRAIN-RATE TENSOR

The modeling of the pressure strain rate terms is an important issue i n the improvement of the generality of closure models for the Reynolds stress transport (RST) equations. A part of these efforts is to provi de accurate experimental information on the pressure-strain rate tenso r, which in turn requires equally accurate information on the dissipat ion and the diffusion tensors. Here the far wake of a cylinder was stu died in order to enable the required balances of the RST equations. Th e experimental results indicate a nonisotropic dissipation tensor, and show the energy redistribution between the different components as de scribed by the pressure-strain rate correlations. Comparisons are made between the experimentally determined pressure-strain rate distributi ons and the corresponding distributions predicted by closure models.