Tall buildings, towers and bridges can be modelled by a rectangular cylinder, which despite its relatively simple geometry contains most of the difficulties found in realistic bluff bodies. In spite of the simple geometry, the flow is complex: flow separation at the upstream corners, unsteady reattachment on the cylinder side, vortex shedding from the downstream corners.
Main research activities on this topic:
- benchmarking of numerical and experimental studies: BARC benchmark
- accuracy and reliability of LES simulations
- effects of corner rounding
- numerical and experimental analysis of the shear-layer dynamics

Research group
Maria Vittoria Salvetti, Alessandro Mariotti, Benedetto Rocchio, Elena Pasqualetto.
External collaborations: Luca Bruno, Politecnico di Torino, Claudio Mannini, Università di Firenze, The ERCOFTAC Knowledge Base Wiki
Main publications:
- Bruno, L., Salvetti, M.V., Ricciardelli, F., Benchmark on the aerodynamics of a rectangular 5:1 cylinder: An overview after the first four years of activity (2014) J. Wind Eng. Ind. Aerodynamics, 126, 87-106.
- Mariotti, A., Salvetti, M.V., Shoeibi Omrani, P., Witteveen, J.A.S., Stochastic analysis of the impact of freestream conditions on the aerodynamics of a rectangular 5:1 cylinder (2016) Comp. Fluids, 136, 170-192.
- Mariotti, A., Siconolfi, L., Salvetti, M.V., Stochastic sensitivity analysis of large-eddy simulation predictions of the flow around a 5:1 rectangular cylinder (2017) Eur. J. Mech., B/Fluids, 62, 149-165.