| Abstract: | Flow-induced oscillations of rigid cylinders exposed to fully developed flow can be described by a fourth order autonomous system of ordinary differential equations. Its rest solution is the only equilibrium point which is unstable in the entire regime of parameters. It turns out that Hopf bifurcations from the trivial solution occur in regions of comparatively low damping. We found that a wind speed parameter, Ω, controls the bifurcations while the other parameters have been arranged into discrete sets. In the case of two bifurcating solutions with branches of amplitudes tending towards each other, hysteresis occurred. The bifurcating solutions are unstable close to their respective bifurcation points. The branch tending to the left-hand side changes its stability and exhibits high-level amplitudes of synchronized oscillations. This type of solution can also be analysed by means of asymptotic methods. Near the location of the bifurcation, the predictions of bifurcation theory, the multiple scales approach, and numerics are in quite good agreement. As opposed to this, the branch tending to the right-hand side represents synchronized oscillations of somewhat smaller period but much smaller cylinder amplitudes, and these vibrations remain unstable in the entire regime of parameters. This means that keeping the cylinder fixed, starting the wind tunnel, and releasing the cylinder at low wind speeds would lead to a jump of its displacement amplitude from the low, unstable to the comparatively high-stable values. It is shown that the theoretical predictions are in fairly good agreement with the experimental trends of flow-induced synchronized cylinder oscillations. |
