FLUID DAMPING OF AN ELASTIC CYLINDER IN A CROSS-FLOW

Damping characteristics of fluid-structure systems are difficult to measure or calculate. In the past, such data have been rather scarce. This study reports an attempt on the use of a numerical approach to derive damping ratios related to fluid-structure interactions. It is based on an autoregressive moving-average (ARMA) method, which is used to analyse the displacement time series obtained from a numerical simulation of an elastic cylinder in a uniform cross-flow. The damping ratios show a similar trend to those obtained in previous experiments. An alternative way to deduce damping ratios is to decompose the transverse force in the structural dynamics equation into a drag (or out-of-phase) and an inertia (or in-phase) component for analysis. The damping thus deduced is in fair agreement with that obtained from ARMA; however, at or near synchronization, where the natural frequency of the stationary cylinder is close to the vortex shedding frequency, there is a very substantial difference between the two results.