Wake-Induced Vibration of a Pair of Circular Cylinders and Its Dependency on Reynolds Number

This paper investigates the wake-induced vibration (WIV) of the downstream cylinder of a pair as far as its dependency of Reynolds number is concerned. Experiments have been conducted in a circulating water channel with a rigid cylinder elastically mounted to respond with oscillations in the cross-flow direction. Various sets of coil springs were employed to vary the reduced velocity of the system maintaining constant the Reynolds number. Experiments performed with a cylinder mounted without springs provided the idealised case of reduced velocity equal to infinity. We conclude that the amplitude of the WIV response has a strong dependency on Reynolds number even within the small range between Re = 2 × 10³ and 2.5 × 10⁴. If the reduced velocity parameter is isolated — by making it equal to infinity, for instance — the Re-dependency still dominates over the behaviour of the response.