Particle-laden water flows past a circular cylinder were numerically investigated. The discrete vortex method (DVM) was employed to evaluate the unsteady water flow fields and a Lagrangian approach was applied for tracking individual solid particles. A dispersion function was defined to represent the dispersion scale of the particle. The wake vortex patterns, the distributions and the time series of dispersion functions of particles with different Stokes numbers were obtained. Numerical results show that the particle distribution in the wake of the circular cylinder is closely related to the particle’s Stokes number and the structure of wake vortices: (1) the intermediate sized particles with Stokes numbers, St, of 0.25, 1.0 and 4.0 can not enter the vortex cores and concentrate near the peripheries of the vortex structures, (2) in the circular cylinder wake, the dispersion intensity of particles decreases as St is increased from 0.25 to 4.0. Particle-laden water flows past a circular cylinder were numerically investigated. The discrete vortex method (DVM) was employed to evaluate the unsteady water flow fields and a Lagrangian approach was applied for tracking individual solid particles. A dispersion function was defined to represent the dispersion scale of the particle. The wake vortex patterns, the distributions and the time series of dispersion functions of particles with different Stokes numbers were obtained. Numerical results show that the particle distribution in the wake of the circular cylinder is closely related to the particle’s Stokes number and the structure of wake vortices: (1) the intermediate sized particles with Stokes numbers, St, of 0.25, 1.0 and 4.0 can not enter the vortex cores and concentrate near the peripheries of the vortex structures, (2) in the circular cylinder wake , the dispersion intensity of particles decreases as St is increased from 0.25 to 4.0.