Flow characteristics around a circular cylinder immersed in a homogeneous uniform shear field are studied in a specially designed wind tunnel.
A shear generator has been constructed to obtain rates of uniform shear of varing degrees; the shear rate can be adjusted by controlling the dampers installed in the shear generator. The high turbulence intensity after the shear generator was damped by installing a screen with fine grids.
The experiments are carried out under two different rates of shear. The centerline Reynolds number is maintained at a constant value of $3.2\times10^4$ for all cases. It is found that the forward stagnation point is shifted towards the higher velocity side and the point of separation in the higher velocity zone moves downstream and that of the lower velocity zone upstream. For each rate of shear, skin friction distribution over the cylinder is measured by a sublayer fence and a flush mounted heated element, and the surface pressure distributions are also measured.