Experimental investigation of the forces and motion responses of two interfering VIV circular cylinders at various tandem and staggered positions

Experimental results are presented in the paper of two elastically supported rigid circular cylinders subjected to steady flows in a flume. The two cylinders were initially placed at various tandem and staggered positions with one in the wake of the other when subject to the steady flows. The in-line centre-to-centre distance varied from 2 to 5 diameters whilst the cross-flow distance from 0 to 2 diameters. The nominal Reynolds numbers were in the sub-critical regime and ranged from 1.12 × 104 to 5.52 × 104, and the nominal reduced velocities from 1.78 to 8.77. The damping ratio of the test set-up is low at 0.003 which gives a combined mass-damping parameter of 0.0046. Both the cylinders were free to respond in both the in-line and the cross-flow directions. The cylinder motion was measured simultaneously with the hydrodynamic loading in the two directions. It was found that the motion trajectories of the downstream cylinder show qualitative difference depending upon whether it is in tandem with the upstream cylinder or in the wake with a transverse offset. The VIV response of the downstream cylinder is dependent upon the reduced velocity of the upstream cylinder and its own reduced velocity based upon the actual mean wake velocity. The drag amplification of the downstream cylinder in the wake appears to be fundamentally different from that of a single VIV cylinder in isolation. Furthermore, unlike the two fixed cylinders in cross flow, the downstream cylinder undergoing VIV no longer experiences a marked non-zero mean lift. The upstream cylinder is largely unaffected by the downstream cylinder when the initial spacing is greater than 3 diameters. On the other hand, the motion response of and the fluid loading on the downstream cylinder are strongly influenced by the upstream cylinder in the spacing range tested.