Low-fidelity simulations in Computational Wind Engineering: shortcomings of 2D RANS in fully separated flows

Computational Wind Engineering has rapidly grown in the last decades and it is currently reaching a relatively mature state. The prediction of wind loading by means of numerical simulations has been proved effective in many research studies and applications to design practice are rapidly spreading. Despite such success, caution in the use of simulations for wind loading assessment is still advisable and, indeed, required. The computational burden and the know-how needed to run high-fidelity simulations is often unavailable and the possibility to use simplified models extremely attractive. In this paper, the applicability of some well-known 2D unsteady RANS models, particularly the k-ω SST, in the aerodynamic characterization of extruded bodies with bluff sections is investigated. The main focus of this paper is on the drag coefficient prediction. The topic is not new, but, in the authors' opinion, worth a careful revisitation. In fact, despite their great technical relevance, a systematic study focussing on sections which manifest a fully detached flow configuration has been overlooked. It is here shown that the considered 2D RANS exhibit a pathological behaviour, failing to reproduce the transition between reattached and fully detached flow regime.