Flow-induced structural vibration involves an understanding of turbulent flow, structural dynamics, as well as the coupling effect between the fluid and the structure. The coupling effect is generally highly non-linear problem which involve fluid and structural motion. In some cases, this effect can lead to violent structural vibration and subsequent failure of the structural due to fatigue. While the flow-induced vibration has received a considerable attention in the literature, the coupling problem is yet to be fully understood. The reason is due to a lack of reliable experimental data. The present research thus attempts to set up experiments in the newly developed HKUST wind/wave tunnel facility to examine the flow-induced vibration of an airfoil due to vortex shedding from upstream....[ Read more ]

Flow-induced structural vibration involves an understanding of turbulent flow, structural dynamics, as well as the coupling effect between the fluid and the structure. The coupling effect is generally highly non-linear problem which involve fluid and structural motion. In some cases, this effect can lead to violent structural vibration and subsequent failure of the structural due to fatigue. While the flow-induced vibration has received a considerable attention in the literature, the coupling problem is yet to be fully understood. The reason is due to a lack of reliable experimental data. The present research thus attempts to set up experiments in the newly developed HKUST wind/wave tunnel facility to examine the flow-induced vibration of an airfoil due to vortex shedding from upstream. In the first experiment, the vibration of the airfoil due to different vortex shedding frequency was measured. Resonance and coupling structural motion was observed. The data obtained from this experiment was modeled numerically using a computer code developed by Jadic et al. [1], who utilized a time marching technique to solve for the fluid-structural interaction numerically. In the second experiment, the space effect between an airfoil and an upstream circular cylinder arranged in tandem was examined. It was found that when the gap distance was decreased beyond a critical value, the vibration of the airfoil could be suppressed significantly. This critical gap distance was found to be equal to the vortex formation length behind the cylinder. It is hoped that this work will contribute to an understanding of the flow-induced vibration problem and impact on computer modeling of the fluid-structural interaction problem.