Vortices are generated when flows past the cylinder

VIV of long flexible cylindrical structures such as marine risers, subsea pipelines, power cables, mooring lines & tethers exhibits several interesting fluid-structure interaction phenomena (e.g. dual resonances, hysteresis, higher harmonics, mode switching, mode sharing, traveling wave, drag amplification). When exposed to ocean flows, these slender bodies undergo nonlinear large-amplitude oscillation due to the space-time varying hydrodynamics associated with vortex shedding. Because VIV results in an increased mean drag and high oscillating stress-induced fatigue in long flexible structures, VIV is one of the utmost concerns in deepwater developments.

Wave-current water flume at Newcastle University

FlexNARA team has been developing computationally efficient models and analysis tools which have been used to examine a variety of VIV phenomena associated with combined hydrodynamics and structural geometric nonlinearities, see our publications. We have developed an experimental framework as below and combined analytical-numerical approaches to deal with several VIV problems.