Aerodynamic interaction between galloping instability and vortices in corner-cut rectangular cylinders

Abstract

Studies on bluff-body aerodynamics have emphasized that galloping instability is strongly associated with the Kármán vortex. This study discusses the aerodynamic interactions between the galloping instability and Kármán and motion-induced vortices, analyzes the effects of these vortices on vortex-induced vibration and galloping, and investigates the stabilizing effects of various corner cuts on a rectangular cylinder. Wind tunnel tests were performed on a rectangular cylinder with a side ratio of 1.5 under a smooth flow for seven different corner shapes. The rectangular cylinder with cut corners significantly reduced both the aerodynamic force coefficients and the Kármán vortex shedding intensity. Furthermore, spring-supported free vibration tests indicated that the onset reduced wind velocities were high in the response amplitudes of all corner-cut sections that were analyzed despite the significantly low onset reduced wind velocities of the Kármán vortex-induced vibration, which were denoted as the reciprocal of the Strouhal number and closely associated with the onset of galloping. This was attributed to the motion-induced vortex dominating the vibration when the Kármán vortex shedding intensity was reduced. Therefore, this study clarified one of the factors that affected the onset-reduced wind velocity of galloping.