Vortex-induced vibration analysis of viscoelastically mounted rigid circular cylinders in cross-flow at a moderate Reynolds number

The vortex-induced vibrations may have disastrous effects in engineering practice, affecting significantly the durability, reliability and safety of engineering structures. This is a reason for which a great deal of effort has been dedicated to the proposition of control strategies to deal with the vortex-induced vibration problem. However, few works have proposed the use of viscoelastic materials to suppress the vibrations induced by vortex shedding, which motivates the present study. Here, the immersed boundary method combined with the virtual physical model is used to investigate the dynamics of a viscoelastically-mounted rigid cylinder in a fluid flow under transverse oscillations induced by vortex shedding. A straightforward time-domain modeling procedure of immersed viscoelastic system by using a four-parameter fractional derivative model is proposed. After the theoretical aspects, numerical tests are performed to investigate the vortex-induced oscillations and flow characteristics of the immersed viscoelastic system at Reynolds number 10,000 for a range of reduced velocity and temperature for two values of mass ratios. The results demonstrate the interest in using viscoelastic materials to mitigate the vortex-induced vibrations.