Experimental study on wake-induced vibrations of two circular cylinders with two degrees of freedom

Wind tunnel tests are conducted to investigate wake-induced vibrations of two circular cylinders with a center-to-center spacing of 4 diameters and attack angle varying from 0 to 20 for Reynolds numbers between 18,000 and 168,800. Effects of structural damping, Reynolds number, attack angle and reduced velocity on dynamic responses are examined. Results show that wake-induced vortex vibrations of the downstream cylinder occur in a wider range of the reduced velocity and have higher amplitudes in comparison to the vortex-induced vibration of a single circular cylinder. Two types of wake-induced instability phenomena with distinct dynamic characteristics are observed, which may be due to different generation mechanisms. For small attack angles like 5 and 10, the instability of the downstream cylinder characterizes a one-degree-of-freedom (1-DOF) oscillation moving in the across-wind direction. For a large attack angle like 20, the instability characterizes a two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) oscillation with elliptical trajectories. For an attack angle of 15, the instability can transform from the 1-DOF pattern to the 2-DOF one with the increase of the Reynolds number. Furthermore, the two instabilities show different sensitivity to the structural damping. The 1-DOF instability can be either completely suppressed or reduced to an unsteady oscillation, while the 2-DOF one is relatively less sensitive to the damping level. Reynolds number has important effects on the wake-induced instabilities.