A numerical study on vortex-induced vibration of an array of cylinders

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Cheng Lin, Lin Pengzhi

Thursday 2 july 2015

9:15 - 9:30h at Amazon (level 1)

Themes: (T) Water engineering, (ST) River and coastal engineering

Parallel session: 10B. Engineering - River

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An array of cylinders is a basic unit in many engineering applications, such as bridge piers, buoyancy columns of a semi-submersible platform, and cables etc. The vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of the cylinder array is an important phenomenon in engineering applications, which is also of great general interest to fluid dynamics researchers. The complexity of flow separation and the unsteady wakes generated by the cylinder array could induce severe structure vibration. Most of the earlier studies on VIV have been focused on the vibration of a single circular cylinder. However, the VIV of a group of cylinders is still not fully understood. In this paper, a virtual boundary force (VBF) method, which is adopted in an in-house numerical model NEWTANK, is used to study the vortex-induced vibration of cylinder array. Firstly, the numerical model is validated by using the VIV of a single cylinder. Then this model is used to study cross-flow past a group of fixed cylinders. The present numerical results will be compared with the available experimental data and other numerical results from published literatures. Finally, the verified model is applied to study the VIV of a cylinder group, investigating the force coefficients, wake interference, and the amplitude of the vibration etc.