Fluid-Structure Energy Transfer of a Tensioned Beam Subject to Vortex-Induced Vibrations in Shear Flow

The fluid-structure energy transfer of a tensioned beam of length to diameter ratio 200, subject to vortex-induced vibrations in linear shear flow, is investigated by means of direct numerical simulation at three Reynolds numbers, from 110 to 1,100. In both the in-line and cross-flow directions, the high-wavenumber structural responses are characterized by mixed standing-traveling wave patterns. The spanwise zones where the flow provides energy to excite the structural vibrations are located mainly within the region of high current where the lock-in condition is established, i.e. where vortex shedding and cross-flow vibration frequencies coincide. However, the energy input is not uniform across the entire lock-in region. This can be related to observed changes from counterclockwise to clockwise structural orbits. The energy transfer is also impacted by the possible occurrence of multi-frequency vibrations.

A Double Birkhoff Wake Oscillator for the Modeling of Vortex-Induced Vibration

A double Birkhoff wake oscillator for the modeling of vortex-induced vibration is presented in which the oscillating variables are assumed to be associated with the boundary layer/near wake and the far wake. The fluid forces are assumed to consist of a potential added mass force and a force due to vortex shedding. In the limit of vanishing incoming flow velocity, the model equations reduce to a form similar to the Morison equation. The results of the double wake oscillator have been compared with forced vibration measurements and free vibration measurements over a range of mass and damping ratios. The model is capable of describing the most important trends in both the forced and free vibration experiments. Specifically, the double wake oscillator is able to model both the upper and lower branch of free vibration.

Faecal Pellets in Deep Marine Soft Clay Crusts: Implications for Hot-Oil Pipeline Design

In recent years, the presence of crusts within near surface sediments found in deep water locations off the west coast of Angola has been of interest to hot-oil pipeline designers. The origin for these crusts is considered to be of biological origin, based on the observation of thousands of faecal pellets in natural crust core samples. This paper presents the results of laboratory tests undertaken on natural and faecal pellet-only samples. These tests investigate the role faecal pellets play in modifying the gemechanical behaviour of clayey sediments. It is found that faecal pellets are able to significantly alter both the strength and the average grain-size of natural sediments, and therefore, influence the permeability and stiffness. Hot-oil pipelines self-embed into and subsequent shear on crusts containing faecal pellets. Being able to predict the time required for installed pipelines to consolidate the underlying sediment and thus, how soon after pipe-laying, the interface strength will develop is of great interest to pipeline designers. It is concluded from wet-sieving samples before and after oedometer tests, that the process of pipe laying is unlikely to destroy pellets. They will therefore, be a major constituent of the sediment subject to soil-pipeline shearing behaviour during axial pipe-walking and lateral buckling. Based on the presented results, a discussion highlighting the key implications for pipeline design is therefore provided.

Experimental Study of Erosion Threshold of Reconstituted Sediments

Understanding of fundamental erosion characteristics of seabed sediments on which pipelines and other structures are founded is critical for the design of these facilities. The erosion threshold condition of cohesive sediments is not well understood because of the complexity and variability of natural sediments. Most of the existing methods for evaluating the erosion behaviours of seabed sediment are often applicable to the certain particular sediment types and test conditions. There appears to be a need for more research efforts in this area. In present research, the threshold of motion of four moderately consolidated mixtures was tested under unidirectional currents using a testing facility. Three threshold shear stress increase modes were observed, including initial increase mode, steady increase mode and equilibrium mode as mass content of mud Pm increases. A dimensionless threshold shear stress τ* is proposed to quantify the shear strength of these reconstituted mixtures, coupled with variation of coarse particle size. Finally, a predicting model is proposed to illustrate the trend of erosion threshold of the four mixtures as a function of mud weight content. Further understanding of erosion threshold can rely on the various consolidation conditions and different coarse and fine materials inputted in the mixture.

Efficient Modal Decomposition and Reconstruction of Riser Response due to VIV

Vortex-Induced-Vibrations (VIV) due to ocean currents can consume a sizable portion of the allotted fatigue life of marine risers. Vibration monitoring and concurrent estimation of fatigue damage due to VIV can significantly enhance the safe and reliable operation of risers. To this end, riser response can be characterized by using sensors (e.g. accelerometers and/or angular rate sensors) to measure the motion of the riser at a few locations. Fatigue damage can be predicted along the entire length of riser from measured data using the method of modal decomposition and reconstruction. In this method the structural response of interest, such as stress and fatigue damage, is expressed by modal superposition, where the modal weights are estimated using measured data and analytical modeshapes. However the accuracy of this method declines as the sensor density (number of sensors per unit riser length) decreases, especially when the riser vibrates in high-order modes and exhibits traveling wave behavior. In this paper, an efficient frequency-domain methodology allowing for accurate reconstruction of the riser response along the entire riser using a limited number of sensors is proposed. We first identify the excited VIV modes (natural frequency and modeshape) using principal vectors of the cross spectral density. Modal decomposition and reconstruction is performed separately for each VIV band surrounding each excited mode. This allows us to use several (as many as the number of sensors) participating modes in each band, and thus improve the accuracy. Since the stress distribution is sensitive to the chosen set of participating modes, we optimize over several candidate sets, selecting the set of modes that result in the lowest prediction error. In order to improve the reconstruction of complex modes, particularly traveling waves, the modeshapes can be augmented with additional basis vectors. The additional basis vectors are obtained by shifting the phase of the normal modes by 90 degrees at every wave number using the Hilbert transform. Though developed in the context of VIV, the method can be used to estimate fatigue damage due to vibrations regardless of the excitation mechanism. The methodology is demonstrated using the NDP (Norwegian Deepwater Program) test data on a 38 meter long slender riser, using data from eight accelerometers. Results show that the proposed algorithm can reconstruct stresses and fatigue damage accurately along the length of the riser in the presence of traveling wave behavior using relatively few sensors.

An Improved Anti-Diffusive VOF Method to Predict Two-Fluid Free Surface Flows

This investigation continues the development of an anti-diffusive volume of fluid method [1] by improving accuracy through the addition of an artificial diffusion term, with a negative diffusion coefficient, to the original advection equation describing the evolution of the fluid volume fraction. The advection and diffusion processes are split into a set of two partial differential equations (PDEs). The improved anti-diffusive Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is coupled with a two-fluid flow solver to predict free surface flows and illustrated by examples given in two-dimensional flows. The first numerical example is a solitary wave travelling in a tank. The second example is a plunging wave generated by flow over a submerged obstacle of prescribed shape on a horizontal floor. The computational results are validated against available experimental data.

Towards a General-Purpose Open Boundary Condition for Wave Simulations

For the design of FPSO’s in harsh environments an accurate assessment of the ability of the platform to survive in extreme sea conditions is of prime importance. Next to scaled model tests on the FPSO in waves also CFD capabilities are at the disposal of the designer. However even with the fastest computers available it is still a challenge to use CFD in the design stage because of the large computational resources they require. In that respect to use a small computational domain will improve the turn around time of the computations, however at the expense of various numerical artifacts, like reflection on artificial boundaries in the computational domain. In order to mitigate the reflection properties new absorbing boundary conditions have been developed. The work in this paper is constructed on the previous study about the generating and absorbing boundary condition (GABC) in the ComFLOW project. We present a method to apply the GABC on all the boundaries in a three dimensional domain. The implementation of the GABC in ComFLOW is explained in detail.

A Numerical Study on Water Flooding in a Damaged Oil Carrier

The objective of the present paper is to carry out numerical simulations on the coupled transient processes of oil leakage, water flooding and study of the stability in a damaged crude oil carrier. For this purpose, numerical approach based on Moving Particle Semi-Implicit (MPS) method is applied to model the complex fluid-solid interaction problem with free surface and oil-water multiphase flow. Changes on the modeling of the towing tank utilized in a previous study on oil leakage carried by the author are done to reduce the undesirable effects of the wave reflection. As a consequence, the improved results of the transient behaviors of hull motions are obtained for the cases with oil leak, as well as the final list angle and volume inside the tank in cases of water flooding. The results of the simulations show that the volume of flooded water is inversely proportional to the filling ratio. Also, the height of the opening has not significant effect on the final list and flooded volume.

Numerical Study of Oscillatory Flow Past Four Cylinders in Square Arrangement for Pitch Ratio Equal to 4

The results of a numerical study of the viscous oscillating flow around four circular cylinders are presented herein, for a constant frequency parameter, β, equal to 50, and Keulegan-Carpenter numbers, KC, ranging between 0.2 and 10. The cylinders were placed on the vertices of a square, whose two sides were perpendicular and two parallel to the oncoming flow, for a pitch ratio, P/D, equal to 4. The finite-element method was employed for the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, in the formulation where the stream function and the vorticity are the field variables. The streamlines and the vorticity contours generated from the solution were used for the flow visualization. When the Keulegan-Carpenter number is lower than 4, the flow remains symmetrical with respect to the horizontal axis of symmetry of the solution domain and periodic at consecutive cycles. As KC increases to 4 the flow becomes aperiodic in different cycles, although symmetry with respect to the horizontal central line of the domain is preserved. For KC equal to 5 asymmetries appear intermittently in the flow, which are eventually amplified as KC increases still further. These asymmetries, in association with the aperiodicity at different cycles, lead to an almost chaotic configuration, as KC grows larger. For characteristic cases the flow pattern and the traces of the hydrodynamic forces are presented. In addition, the mean and r.m.s. values of the in-line and transverse forces and the hydrodynamic coefficients of the inline force were evaluated for the entire range of Keulegan-Carpenter numbers examined.