Numerical Analysis of Flow-induced Vibration of a Flexible Plate

Abstract

Fluid-Structure interaction has gained importance since the natural calamities on foreign lands such as Tacoma bridge failure, and nuclear reactor failure due to unstable vibration. The study of these historical events highlights an important multi-physics phenomenon, which involves two-way fluid structure interaction. FIV has, now a day, employed to generate electric power using piezoelectric materials. This dissertation basically focused on numerical study of flow-induced vibration of a flexible structure behind the cylindrical body. When flow past over the bluff body, vortex-shedding takes place which causes perturbation in downstream structure. In the thesis, a systematic study of flow-induced vibration is carried out. In addition, influence of flow velocity and size of the bluff body on the level and frequency of the training flexible structure are investigated. It is observed the vortex shedding frequency locked with the structural frequency. For different flow velocity, different structural frequency synchronizes and results high amplitude vibration. The effect of variation in the size of the front bluff body gives high amplitude oscillation of structure for a range of sizes, beyond that arbitrary high amplitude vibration is noted.