Combined action of uniform flow and oscillating flow around marine riser at low Keulegan-Carpenter number

Abstract

With the increase of petroleum and gas production in deep ocean, marine risers of circular cylinder shape are widely used in the offshore oil and gas platform. In order to research the hydrodynamic performance of marine risers, the dynamic mesh technique and User-Defined Function (UDF) are used to simulate the circular cylinder motion. The motion of a transversely oscillating circular cylinder in combination of uniform flow and oscillating flow is simulated. The uniform flow and oscillating flow both are in x direction. SIMPLE algorithm is used to solve the Navier-Stokes equations. The User-Defined Function is used to control the cylinder transverse vibration and the inlet flow. The lift and drag coefficient changing with time and the map of vorticity isolines at different phase angle are obtained. Force time histories are shown for uniform flow at Reynolds number (Re) of 200 and for the combination of uniform and oscillating flows. With the increase of amplitude of oscillating flow in combined flow, the change of lift amplitude is not sensitive to the the change of cylinder oscillating frequency. Lift amplitude increases with the increase of oscillating flow amplitude in the combined flow, but there is no definite periodicity of the lift coefficient. The drag and inertia force coefficients change when the maximum velocity of the oscillating flow increases in the combined flow. The vortex shedding near the circular cylinder shows different characteristics.