WIV response of tapered circular cylinders in a tandem arrangement: An experimental study

For tapered cylinders in tandem arrangement it is found that unlike uniform cylinders, the amplitude of vibrations does not decrease with the increase of the spacing ratio. The amplitude of the transverse response in the tandem tapered cylinder is slightly higher than that for the uniform cylinder in a tandem arrangement. With a tandem arrangement, the three dimensionality of the flow field appears not to have any lessening effect on the transverse WIV response of cylinders. The spacing ratio at which the tapered cylinder acts more like a single tapered cylinder is noticed to vary from that for the equivalent uniform cylinders in a tandem arrangement. It appears that, because of the three dimensional nature of the wakes downstream of the tapered cylinder, the vortices shed from the upstream tapered cylinder grow weak at much closer distances.