A collaborative simulation for active flow-induced vibration control of a circular cylinder

In this paper a collaborative simulation between Matlab/Simulink and Fluent softwares is done to active control of an elastically mounted circular cylinder, free to move in in-line and cross-flow directions. The control goal is reduction of the two-dimensional vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) of cylinder. The natural oscillator frequency is complemented with the vortex shedding frequency of a stationary cylinder. A parallel simulation scheme is realized by linking the PID controller employed in Matlab/Simulink to the plant model constructed in Fluent, aiming at calculation of the control force necessary for total annihilation of the transverse cylinder vibrations. The simulation results reveal the high performance and effectiveness of the adopted control algorithm in diminishing the VIV of elastic cylinder. Once the control algorithm is turned on, there is a extreme reduction in the transverse and in-line cylinder oscillation amplitudes as well as lift and drag coefficients values. In particular, it is observed that the coalesced vortices in the far wake region of the uncontrolled cylinder are seprated and displaying wake vortices of weaker strengths.