Flow-Induced Stream-Wise Vibration of Circular Cylinders

Results from a series of studies on the stream-wise vibration of a circular cylinder verifying Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers Standard S012-1998, Guideline for Evaluation of Flow-induced Vibration of a Cylindrical Structure in a Pipe, are summarized and discussed in this paper. Experiments were carried out in a water tunnel and in a wind tunnel using a two-dimensional cylinder model elastically supported at both ends of the cylinder and a cantilevered cylinder model with a finite span length that was elastically supported at one end. These cylinder models were allowed to vibrate with one degree of freedom in the stream-wise direction. In addition, we adopted a cantilevered cylinder model that vibrated with two degrees of freedom in both the stream-wise and cross-flow directions under the same vibration conditions as an actual thermocouple well. The value of the Scruton number (structural damping parameter) was changed over a wide range, so as to evaluate the value of the critical Scruton number that suppressed vibration of the cylinder. For the two-dimensional cylinder, two different types of stream-wise excitations appeared in the reduced velocity range of approximately half of the resonance-reduced velocity. For the stream-wise vibration in the first excitation region, due to a symmetric vortex flow, the response amplitudes were sensitive to the Scruton number, while the shedding frequency of alternating vortex flow was locked-in to half of the Strouhal number of vibrating frequency of a cylinder in the second excitation region. In addition, the effects of the aspect ratio of a cantilevered cylinder on the flow-induced vibration characteristics were clarified and compared with the results of a two-dimensional cylinder. When a cantilevered circular cylinder with a finite length vibrates with one degree of freedom in the stream-wise di-rection, it is found that acylinder with a small aspect ratio has a single excitation region, whereas a cylinder with a large aspect ratio has two excitation regions. Furthermore, the vibration mechanism of a symmetric vortex flow was investigated by installing a splitter plate in the wake to prevent shedding of alternating vortices. The vibration amplitude of acylinder with a splitter plate increased surprisingly more than the amplitude of a cylinder without a splitter plate. For a cantilevered cylinder vibrating with two degrees of freedom, the Lissajous figure of vibration of the first excitation region shows the trajectories of elongated elliptical shapes, and in the second excitation region, the