@1318980 thanks for the reply. I ran a short test changing the simulation to transient and from what i could tell the flow was still very much laminar.
I found another similar simulation by vardhan17 and i noticed that he used a laminar turbulence model, had the boundary layer turned on and was using icofoam as the solver. im pretty sure the boundary layer will affect the results but would there be any change with the turbulence model and the solver?