A Data-Driven Approach for the Stability Analysis of Vortex-Induced Vibration

In this paper, a general data-driven approach to construct a reduced-order model (ROM) for the coupled fluid-structure interaction (FSI) problem of a transversely vibrating bluff body in an incompressible flow is presented. The proposed data-driven approach relies on the Eigensystem Realization Algorithm (ERA) to design ROM models in a state-space format. The stability boundaries of the coupled FSI system are obtained by examining the eigenvalue trajectories of the ERA-based ROM. These stability boundaries provide us valuable quantitative insights into the lock-in phenomenon of the bluff-body vibration. We demonstrate the present ERA-based ROM technique for various configurations of bluff bodies such as an isolated single cylinder, the side-by-side and the tandem cylinder arrangements. A comparative study on the effect of different appendages to suppress the VIV of a cylinder is also presented using the ERA-based stability analysis. The validity of the proposed method for the FSI stability analysis on such variety of configurations has not been presented before and is the novel contribution of this paper. Overall, the proposed data-driven framework is found to be much more effective in terms of computational costs and the predicted lock-in regions are comparable to high-fidelity full-order simulations. This work has a potential for a profound impact on the design optimization and control of bluff body structures used in offshore industry.