Three-dimensional vortex-induced vibration of a circular cylinder at subcritical Reynolds numbers with low-R_e correction

Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) method equipped with the shear stress transport (SST)K−ω model is widely used to simulate the vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of elastically-mounted rigid cylinders subjected to fluid flow. Previous studies show that this method is very difficult to capture the maximum response of the cylinder occurring in the upper regime. Moreover, previous numerical studies by using this method mainly focus on the two-dimensional (2-D) simulations. In reality, VIV is a three-dimensional (3-D) phenomenon, the 3-D effect must then be incorporated in the numerical simulations. To improve the accuracy of the RANS method with SSTK−ω, the low-Reynolds numbers (R_e) correction technique is applied to the numerical model in the present study and the 3-D VIV responses of an elastically-mounted cylinder subjected to the subcritical fluid flow regime are numerically investigated. The two-way coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) framework is developed and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses are performed for a range of Reynolds numbers R_e=2000−12000. Numerical results show that the present method can lead to more accurate VIV response estimations compared to the previous numerical studies. Moreover, the formation of the wake vortex shedding modes and its transition are well captured by this method.