Simulating the Fluid-Structure Interaction of a Flexible Tube in an Array of Rigid Tubes

Abstract

Two important single-phase mechanisms for flow-induced vibration of heat-exchanger tube bundles were used to demonstrate the capabilities of commercial software to simulate unsteady fluid- structure interactions (FSI). Reasonable agreement was obtained between the FSI simulations and experimental data for the onset of fluidelastic instability. There was also reasonable agreement between the FSI simulations and empirical correlations for the dynamic tube response to random turbulence excitation. Additional benefits of performing FSI simulations were the ability to characterize important features of the unsteady flow fields and hydrodynamic parameters such as viscous damping coefficients, which would otherwise require elaborate experimental measurements.