Similarity study on mean pressure distributions of cylindrical and spherical bodies

This paper investigates the similarity existing among the pressure distributions of a circular cylinder and a sphere theoretically and experimentally. The theoretical distributions, in the context of potential flow, have the same expression when re-scaled in terms of coordinates involving quantities at specific points. This expression has been found useful in representing the experimental data (upstream of separation) in a variety of flow situations where the model is either circular or spherical. It is believed that such a rescaling isolates the boundary-layer effect so that the experimental and theoretical distributions are comparable. An application is included to demonstrate how this expression can provide a realistic prediction. The present approach may also be treated as an alternative to representing the experimental data with a finite Fourier series.