Vortex Induced Oscillations of Cylinders at Intermediate and High Reynolds Numbers (2008)

Undergraduate: Philip Howard

Faculty Advisor: Ashwin Vaidya
Department: Mathematical Decision Science

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The orientational dynamics of falling bodies in
fluids is very intriguing and complex. For instance,it is well known that a symmetric body, free falling in its steady state, in a very viscous fluid retains its initial orientation as it falls. In a Newtonian fluid, when inertial effects are small, but prominent, it falls with its long axis perpendicular to gravity while in a non-Newtonian fluid, the long axis aligns with the direction of gravity (Liu and Joseph). In this study, we focus on the orientation of bodies (cylinders) in a Newtonian fluid at intermediate Reynolds numbers when inertial effects become large and vortex shedding in the wake of the body becomes dominant. The objective of our investigation is to classify different behaviors exhibited by the body as a function of the fluid-structure parameters.