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Abstract

Heat exchanger tube arrays are susceptible to damage due to flow-induced vibration, with fluidelastic instability (FEI) potentially being the most destructive mechanism. In this article a simple wake model consisting of a convecting vortex sheet is proposed to represent the transient nature of fluidelastic forces present in a tube array. Using this model, the memory function proposed by Granger and Paidoussis has been obtained without the need to calibrate the model with experimental data. The resulting function is found to compare well with the first- and second-order empirical approximations. The memory function has been combined with experimental data for the static fluid force to produce a prediction of the critical velocity for a range of mass damping parameters. This stability threshold is in reasonable agreement with experimental data. Therefore, it is concluded that vorticity transport may well form part of the underlying mechanism responsible for damping controlled FEI, as previously proposed.

Keywords

fluidelastic instability fluidelasticity quasi-unsteady Wagner function

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A new model for damping controlled fluidelastic instability in heat exchanger tube arrays

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