Study of vortex-shedding-induced vibration of a flexible splitter plate behind a cylinder

Abstract

A computational analysis of vortex-shedding-induced vibration of a flexible splitter plate behind a cylinder at a low Reynolds number is conducted to understand effects of the length and flexibility of a splitter plate on the drag and lift of a cylinder and vibration of the attached plate. The drag and lift coefficients, the Strouhal number of vortex shedding, and the magnitude of tip displacements of a flexible splitter plate are found to be intricate functions of the plate flexibility. The deflection shape of a flexible splitter plate is dependent on the length of the plate, while the deflection magnitude is a function of the bending stiffness and natural frequencies of the corresponding plate. It is concluded in the present work that the Strouhal number of vortex shedding or the frequency of plate deflection is difficult to estimate using natural frequencies of the plate, which are calculated by inducing free vibration, since the fluid loading is distributed non-uniformly over the plate rather than concentrated at the tip of the plate. The present study suggests that the flexibility of a splitter plate, in general, adversely modulates the drag and lift forces acting on the cylinder surface while it promotes the oscillation of the plate.

The response of an elastic splitter plate attached to a cylinder to laminar pulsatile flow

“…They showed that the oscillation frequency of the plate varies linearly with dilatational wave speed inside the plate (or its natural oscillation frequencies). Lee and You [16] showed that the plate length influences vibration modes of the splitter plate, and the plate displacement is a function of the Young's Modulus and its natural frequencies. Furquan and Mittal [18] investigated flow past two sideby-side square cylinders with flexible splitter plates and observed lock-in for the plate frequency closer to its first natural frequency.…”

Flow-induced deformation of a flexible thin structure as manifestation of heat transfer enhancement

“…In this benchmark, an elastic plate attached to the lee side of a rigid cylinder develops self-sustained oscillation in 2D laminar channel flow. The FSI studies of flexible thin structures by Dunne and Rannacher [9], Heil et al [10], Bhardwaj and Mittal [11], Lee and You [12] and Tian et al [13] showed validation of their respective solvers against the benchmark proposed by Turek and Hron [8].…”

“…Second, we provide benchmark results which will serve as validation data for FSI solvers coupled with convective heat transfer. Since several previous numerical studies [9,10,11,12,13] used FSI benchmark proposed by Turek and Hron [8] to validate FSI solvers, we propose an extension of this FSI benchmark to account for coupled convective heat transfer in the present paper.…”

A strategy to interface isogeometric analysis with Lagrangian finite elements—Application to incompressible flow problems

“…Laminar flow past a circular cylinder with a thin flexible tail is a popular two-dimensional numerical benchmark for FSI solvers. The benchmark configuration was first proposed in Turek and Hron [2006], and has since been adopted by many researchers to validate different FSI solvers (e.g., Heil et al [2008], Kollmannsberger et al [2009], Bhardwaj and Mittal [2012], Lee and You [2013] among others). Three different test cases -based on the fluid velocity at the inlet and the material parameters of the deformable tail -were proposed in the original paper of Turek and Hron [2006].…”