Flow-induced vibrations in cylinder arrays are moderated by convective instabilities

Abstract

This study investigates the flow in rows of large numbers of cylinders. When the cylinders are fixed in place, we show that the dynamics are dictated by a cascade of regimes -fluctuation, vortex shedding, convectively unstable region -that repeat as the flow traverses the row, the convectively unstable regions acting as "event horizons" allowing no information to pass upstream. For moderate cylinder spacings, we show that these same regimes govern the flow-induced vibration response when the cylinders are elastically-mounted.