A Numerical Investigation of Vortex-Induced Vibration Response and Fatigue Damage for Flexible Cylinders Under Combined Uniform and Oscillatory Flow

Vortex-induced vibration(VIV)for flexible cylinders under combined uniform and oscillatory flow is a challenging and practical issue in ocean engineering.In this paper,a time domain numerical model is adopted to investigate the characteristics of cross-flow VIV response and fatigue damage under different combined flow cases.Firstly,the adopted VIV model and fatigue analysis procedure are validated well against the published experimental results of a4-m cylinder model under pure oscillatory flows.Then,forty-five combined flow cases of the same cylinder model are designed to reveal the VIV response characteristics with different non-dimensional oscillation period T^*and combined ratio r.The combined flow cases are classified into three categories to investigate the effect of r on cylinder’s dynamic response,and the effect of T*is described under long and short period cases.Finally,fatigue analysis is carried out to investigate how the structural fatigue damage varies with the variations of r and T^*.The captured characteristics of structural response and fatigue damage are explained through the VIV mechanism analysis.