There has been much recent interest in the combined structural and aerodynamic properties of porous metal foams, but there does not yet appear to be a consensus on the aerodynamic behaviour of these foam materials. A comprehensive analytical and experimental study with special attention to scaling was carried out in order to examine the flow around cylinders coated with porous metal foam and characterize the effects upon the mechanisms governing shear layer separation, vortex shedding and wake formation. Results have yielded a correlation between the distance separating the detaching shear layers and the vorticity losses in the near-wake. It seems that it is the coating configuration, rather than geometry, that influences vortex shedding, and therefore foams affect the flow in a similar way as shrouds or bleeding systems.
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