A numerical study of flow-structure interactions with application to flow past a pair of cylinders

Flow-structure interaction is a generic problem for many engineering applications, such as flow--induced oscillations of marine risers and cables. In this thesis a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) approach based on spectral/hp elements is employed. Structural motion implies changes on the boundaries of the flow domain. An Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) scheme is incorporated to efficiently move the mesh without remeshing. Efficient three-dimensional simulations with periodicity in at least one space direction are achieved using Hybrid Fourier-Jacobi expansions. Both 2D and 3D formulations can treat an arbitrary number of oscillating bodies. Due to the large computational demands of the resulting systems parallel computing is used with MPI. Numerical experiments are run and systematic data sets are obtained for flow around two cylinders. Stationary cylinders in tandem and side-by-side arrangements are examined parametrically over spacing and Reynolds number. Parametric studies of tandem cylinders in prescribed motion and free oscillation are also conducted. For tandem cylinders, sudden changes in the forces occur at a critical spacing where a transition from reattachment to binary vortex regime occurs.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Ocean Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Papaioannou, Georgios (Georgios Vasilios), 1975-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Dick K.P. Yue and Michael Triantafyllou.

• Ocean Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33446

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33446