Flow-Induced In-Line Oscillation of a Circular Cylinder in a Water Tunnel

Flow-induced in-line oscillation of a circular cylinder has been experimentally studied by free-oscillation tests in a water tunnel. Response amplitudes of a circular cylinder have been measured for determining the values of the reduced mass-damping parameter of less than 1.0. In the free-oscillation tests, the cylinder models were spring-mounted so as to oscillate as a two-dimensional rigid cylinder in the water tunnel. Two types of excitation phenomena appear at approximately half of the resonance flow velocity. The response amplitudes are sensitive to the reduced mass-damping parameter during the in-line oscillation of the first excitation region with a symmetric vortex street, and the alternate vortices are periodically shed, locking-in with the vibration of the cylinder in the second excitation region. A hysteresis phenomenon is observed to appear in the in-line oscillation of the latter region. A cantilevered circular cylinder with a finite length aspect ratio of 10 was tested for fluid-elastic characteristics of the cylinder, and these characteristics are found to be quite different from those of the two-dimensional cylinder, having only one wide velocity region of excitation. The results of this study are providing important supporting data for the recent publication “Guideline for Evaluation of Flow-Induced Vibration of a Cylindrical Structure in a Pipe,” by the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, Standard JSME S012-1998.