Vibrations of a cylinder in a uniform flow in the presence of a no-slip side-wall

•Free vibrations of cylinder in the presence of no-slip side wall are carried out.•The side wall leads to oblique vortex shedding for the stationary cylinder.•Parallel vortex shedding is observed in the lock-in regime.•Oblique vortex shedding occurs outside the lock-in regime.•Results of free vibrations are confirmed from forced vibration studies.

A circular cylinder placed in a uniform flow, and that spans the entire length between two side walls, may experience either parallel or oblique vortex shedding depending on the end conditions. It was shown by Mittal and Sidharth (2014) that the spatio-temporal periodicity of the oblique vortex shedding results in constant-in-time force experienced by the cylinder. On the contrary, parallel vortex shedding leads to fluid force that fluctuates with time. The free vibrations of a circular cylinder, in the presence of a wall, are investigated. For comparison, computations with end walls, where a slip condition on velocity is specified, are also carried out. The Reynolds number, based on the diameter of the cylinder and free-stream speed of the flow, is Re=100. The initial condition for the free vibrations is the fully developed unsteady flow past a stationary cylinder with oblique shedding. It is found that as the amplitude of vibration of the cylinder builds up, the vortices shed from the cylinder align with its axis leading to parallel shedding. The response of the cylinder is associated with two branches: initial and lower. On the lower branch, the response of the cylinder is virtually identical from two- and three-dimensional computations. The flow as well as the response is different on the initial branch and outside the synchronization regime. Forced vibrations confirm the phenomena.