Transient flow past a circular cylinder: A benchmark solution

Abstract The simulation of the von Karman vortex street behind a circular cylinder has long been used as a benchmark problem to test the performance of numerical algorithms for solving the Navier‐Stokes equations. It is particularly suited for comparing different numerical outflow boundary conditions since the computational domain must necessarily be terminated in the vortex street itself. This paper presents detailed numerical results of the flow past a cylinder at a Reynolds number of 100 on a very fine mesh which has been purposely designed to extend past the typically used dimensions. Hopefully, these results can form a basis of a benchmark solution for the comparison of the effects of different outflow boundary conditions.