Flow Behavior Behind A Freely Suspended Cylinder in the Wake of A Stationary Cylinder

Abstract

The experiment of flow past a freely suspended circular cylinder in the wake of an upstream stationary cylinder was carried out in a re-circulating water channel using the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique. The upstream cylinder was fixed, while the downstream cylinder was suspended from a platform and allowed to move freely in the horizontal plane. The centre-to-centre spacing ratio between two tandem cylinders was initially kept at a constant value of 3.0. The instantaneous flow field and the orbital trajectories were analyzed to reveal the effect of the presence of the upstream cylinder and flow velocity on the dynamic response of the downstream suspended cylinder. The results showed that the upstream stationary cylinder has significant effect on modifying the flow patterns behind two tandem cylinders. Different trajectories of the downstream suspended cylinder with variation of flow velocity U were observed, such as: (1) depicting a figure-8 type motion at U = 0.27 m/s; (2) undergoing intermittent oscillations as it travels downstream at 0.3 m/s ⩽ U ⩽ 0.37 m/s; (3) successive moving downstream, no obvious streamwise oscillation observed at U = 0.43 m/s.