Molecular dynamics simulation study on flow around a circular cylinder in nanoscale

Molecular dynamics simulation methods were carried out in this paper to study the flow of fluid (Ar) around a nano-circular cylinder (Pt) at a low Reynolds number (Re = 8) with the Lennard-Jones (L-J) potential model. The periodic flow field was obtained by averaging streamlines within a small time scale. The common characteristics of the emergence, combination, periodic shedding and oscillation of vortices were observed from the profiles of the streamlines in nanoscale. The large time-averaged streamline forms the steady symmetric vortex. The results show that the flow indicates different characteristics in different timescales. The density profiles show that the fluid density in the upstream region is larger than that in the downstream region and the fluids become denser when it is farther from the symmetric axis. The paper also indicates that the flow phenomena can be described in details with molecular dynamics simulation methods.