Fluid Structure Interaction Modelling for the Vibration of Tube Bundles: Part I—Analysis of the Fluid Flow in a Tube Bundle

It is well known that a fluid may strongly influence the dynamic behaviour of a structure. Many different physical phenomena may take place, depending on the conditions: fluid flow, fluid at rest, little or high displacements of the structure. Inertial effects can take place, with lower vibration frequencies, dissipative effects also, with damping, instabilities due to the fluid flow (Fluid Induced Vibration). In this last case the structure is excited by the fluid. Tube bundles structures are very common in the nuclear industry. The reactor cores and the steam generators are both structures immersed in a fluid which may be submitted to a seismic excitation or an impact. In this case the structure moves under an external excitation, and the movement is influence by the fluid. The main point in such system is that the geometry is complex, and could lead to very huge sizes for a numerical analysis. Homogenization models have been developed based on the Euler equations for the fluid. Only inertial effects are taken into account. A next step in the modelling is to build models based on the homogenization of the Navier-Stokes equations. The papers presents results on an important step in the development of such model: the analysis of the fluid flow in a oscillating tube bundle. The analysis are made from the results of simulations based on the Navier-Stokes equations for the fluid. Comparisons are made with the case of the oscillations of a single tube, for which a lot of results are available in the literature. Different fluid flow pattern may be found, depending in the Reynolds number (related to the velocity of the bundle) and the Keulegan-Carpenter number (related to the displacement of the bundle). A special attention is paid to the quantification of the inertial and dissipative effects, and to the forces exchanges between the bundle and the fluid. The results of such analysis will be used in the building of models based on the homogenization of the Navier-Stokes equations for the fluid.