Numerical Simulation of Vortex-Induced Vibration of Circular Cylinders

Figure1. Comparison between CFD and experimental results.

Vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of structures are commonly encountered in various fields of engineering such as aero-space industry, power generation and transmission, civil engineering, offshore and ocean engineering. When a bluff body is exposed to a fluid flow, the fluid-structure interaction gives rise to VIV. This self-induced and self-sustained vibration excited by vortex shedding can cause significant long-term fatigue damage. Therefore, a better comprehension of VIV is very crucial for design and analysis of key offshore cylindrical structures. Conventionally, VIV behaviour is studied by experiments. But, due to the limitations of experiments in modelling complex flow fields in realistic  conditions   and   with   the   development   of  computing technology and flow visualization technology in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), more and more researchers begin to seek their way of understanding VIV via numerical simulations.

Figure 2. 2T vortex shedding mode.

Currently, researchers from the Centre for Marine Hydrodynamics at the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the University of Strathclyde are developing a robust approach in predicting VIV of marine structures. The Finite-Volume Method (FVM) based fluid model is coupled with a non-linear structure model to deal with the Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) problem. Another fully coupled fluid-structure method has also been developed to predict VIV of slender structures. HPC resources are used for parallel computing to reduce the computational time. Initial testing on 2 degrees of freedom (2-DoF) VIV of a circular cylinder has been undertaken (see figures) and further researches will be carried out on predicting VIV of flexible circular cylinders.
For more information about the project contact  Dr Qing Xiao (qing.xiao@strath.ac.uk), Lecturer at the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the University of Strathclyde.
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