Simulation of tube bank flow-induced vibration

Lucian Arbore¹; Fabio Saltara¹

¹ Escola Politécnica da USP

doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-0333

Resumo

Results from a numerical simulation are reported for amplitudes of cross-flow induced vibrations at the fluid elastic instability regime in a tube bank. The tube bank has identical geometry and characteristics as for an experimental wind-tunnel facility described in the literature, for which there are experimental measurements of the amplitudes of vibrations at the fluid elastic instability regime. The rotated triangular array has a pitch ratio of 1.375 and consists of 1 movable tube surrounded by 134 rigid tubes. The numerical simulation is accomplished with a commercial CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software. For the region around each tube, a mesh with elements dimensions growing geometrically normal to the tube was considered, with growing factor 1.13 and the dimension for the element adjacent to the tube wall equal to 0.1% of the tube external diameter. The flow was considered incompressible, monophasic, turbulent, bidimensional for the numerical simulation. The flow data considered were the same as for the experiments at the wind-tunnel facility. The results presented in this paper for the amplitudes obtained by numerical simulation are compared with the experimental results obtained in the above mentioned experimental facility.

Palavras-chave: tube bank; fluid elastic instability; cross-flow induced vibration; CFD; numerical simulation