Instability of an Oscillating Cylinder in a Circulation Flow of Ideal Fluid

The problem of the stability of a circular cylinder in a circulation flow is considered under the condition that the cylinder can perform both free (free cylinder) and forced oscillations (cylinder on a spring). It is shown that this simple system can be unstable in the presence of flow vorticity. Particular cases of vorticity distributions which make it possible to obtain an analytic solution are considered. The case of weak monotonically decreasing vorticity of an arbitrary form is analyzed for an arbitrary relation between the densities of the cylinder and the fluid. It turns out that the instability can develop only for a cylinder whose density is greater than that of the fluid. An approximate method of solving this problem based on consideration of the energy balance in the system is constructed. This makes it possible to obtain an expression for the growth rates and explain the physical mechanism realizing the instability, which is associated with the possibility of energy transfer from perturbations in the critical layer to the cylinder oscillations.