Active vortex-induced vibration control of a circular cylinder at low Reynolds numbers using an adaptive fuzzy sliding mode controller

An adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control (AFSMC) scheme is applied to actively suppress the two-dimensional vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) of an elastically mounted circular cylinder, free to move in in-line and cross-flow directions. Laminar flow regime at Re=90, low non-dimensional mass with equal natural frequencies in both directions, and zero structural damping coefficients, are considered. The natural oscillator frequency is matched with the vortex shedding frequency of a stationary cylinder at Re=100. The strongly coupled unsteady fluid/cylinder interactions are captured by implementing the moving mesh technology through integration of an in-house developed User Define Function (UDF) into the main code of the commercial CFD solver Fluent. The AFSMC approach comprises of a fuzzy system designed to mimic an ideal sliding-mode controller, and a robust controller intended to compensate for the difference between the fuzzy controller and the ideal one. The fuzzy system parameters as well as the uncertainty bound of the robust controller are adaptively tuned online. A collaborative simulation scheme is realized by coupling the control model implemented in Matlab/Simulink to the plant model constructed in Fluent, aiming at determination of the transverse control force required for complete suppression of the cylinder streamwise and cross-flow oscillations. The simulation results demonstrate the high performance and effectiveness of the adopted control algorithm in attenuating the 2D-VIV of the elastic cylinder over a certain flow velocity range. Also, the enhanced transient performance of the AFSM control strategy in comparison with a conventional PID control law is demonstrated. Furthermore, the effect of control action on the time evolution of vortex shedding from the cylinder is discussed. In particular, it is observed that the coalesced vortices in the far wake region of the uncontrolled cylinder, featuring the C(2S)-type vortex shedding characteristic mode, are ultimately forced to switch to the classical von Kármán vortex street of 2S-type mode, displaying wake vortices of moderately weaker strengths very similar to those of the stationary cylinder. Lastly, robustness of AFSMC is verified against relatively large structural uncertainties as well as with respect to a moderate deviation in the uniform inlet flow velocity.