Effects of helical strakes on the vortex-induced vibration over a thermowell in a pipe flow
A thermowell is a device to protect a thermometer used for measuring temperature in many industrial application. The thermowell is exposed to vortex-induced vibration when the flow speed in a pipe is large so that shedding frequency due to Karman vortex streets downstream of the thermowell corresponds with its natural frequency. The vortex-induced vibration can cause fracture of the thermowell structure by cyclic loading. This phenomenon has long been a research topic in the field of marine engineering. Now, it can be a concern in metrology area. The present study investigates the suppressing effect of the vortex-induced vibrations of the thermowell by means of helical strakes. Flow visualizations can show that the helical strakes can suppress the vortex-induced vibration by generating three-dimensional shedding vortices with short spanwise length. The three-dimensional shedding vortices does not give resonance to the thermowell effectively because the vortices generate asynchronous forces along the thermowell. In this study, flow visualizations of the thermowell vibrations and resonant frequency measurements were attempted to investigate the suppressing effect of the helical strakes for safely using the thermowell in operating conditions with high flow speeds.
On the study of vortex-induced vibration of a cylinder with helical strakes
Abstract While the effect of helical strakes on suppression of Vortex-Induced Vibrations (VIV) has been studied extensively, the mechanism of VIV mitigation using helical strakes is much less well documented in the literature. In the present study, a rigid circular cylinder of diameter d =80 mm attached with three-strand helical strakes of dimensions of 10 d in pitch and 0.12 d in height was tested in a wind tunnel. It was found that the helical strakes can reduce VIV by about 98%. Unlike the bare cylinder, which experiences lock-in over the reduced velocity in the range of 5–8.5, the straked cylinder does not show any lock-in region. In exploring the mechanism of VIV reduction by helical strakes, measurements in stationary bare and straked cylinder wakes using both a single X-probe at four different Reynolds numbers, i.e. Re=10 240, 20 430, 30 610 and 40 800, and two X-probes with variable separations in the spanwise direction at R e=20 430 were conducted. It was found that vortices shed from the straked cylinder are weakened significantly. The dominate frequency varies by about 30% over the range of x / d =10–40 in the streamwise direction while that differs by about 37.2% of the averaged peak frequency over a length of 3.125 d in the spanwise direction. The latter is supported by the phase difference between the velocity signals measured at two locations separated in the spanwise direction. The correlation length of the vortex structures in the bare cylinder wake is much larger than that obtained in the straked cylinder wake. As a result, the straked cylinder wake agrees more closely with isotropy than the bare cylinder wake. Flow visualization on the plane perpendicular to the cylinder axis at Reynolds number of about 300 reveals small-scale vortices in the shear layers of the straked cylinder wake. However, these vortices do not roll up and interact with each other to form the well-organized Karman-type vortices. Flow visualization on the plane parallel to the cylinder axis shows vortex dislocation and swirling flow, which should be responsible for the variations of the peak frequency in the streamwise as well as spanwise directions.
Laminar heat or mass transfer in rectangular channels and in cylindrical tubes for fully developed flow: comparison of solutions obtained for various boundary conditions
Abstract A comparison is made of results obtained with various boundary conditions at the wall of the channels. By comparing blood Sherwood numbers for finite wall resistance with those for constant concentration boundary condition only a small variation is found for various points along the blood channel.