Numerical Analysis of Vortex Induced Vibration of Circular Cylinder in Lock-in Regime

Abstract

The slender structures such as high rise building or marine riser are highly susceptible to dynamic force exerted by fluid-structure interactions among which vortex-induced vibration(VIV) is the main cause of dynamic unstability of the structural system. If VIV occurs in natural frequency regime of the structure, fatigue failure likely happens by so-called lock-in phenomenon. This study presents the numerical analysis of dynamic behavior of both structure and fluid in the lock-in regimes and investigates the subjacent phenomena to hold the resonance frequency in spite of the change of flow condition. Unsteady and laminar flow was considered for a two-dimensional circular cylinder which was assumed to move freely in 1 degree of freedom in the direction orthogonal to the uniform inflow. Fluid-structure interaction was implemented by solving both unsteady flow and dynamic motion of the structure sequentially in each time step where the fluid domain was remeshed considering the movement of the body. The results show reasonable agreements with previous studies and reveal characteristic features of the lock-in phenomena. Not only the lift force but also drag force are drastically increasing during the lock-in regime, the vertical displacement of the cylinder reaches up to 20% of the diameter of the cylinder. The correlation analysis between lift and vertical displacement clearly show the dramatic change of the phase difference from in-phase to out-of-phase when the cylinder experiences lock-in. From the results, it can be postulated that the change of phase difference and flow condition is responsible for the resonating behavior of the structure during lock-in.