Prediction of Vortex-Induced Vibration Response of a Pipeline Span by Coupling a Viscous Flow Solver and a Beam Finite Element Solver

This paper describes a fluid-structure interaction (FSI) modeling approach to predict the vortex-induced vibration response of a pipeline span by coupling a three-dimensional viscous incompressible Navier–Stokes solver with a beam finite element solver in time domain. The pipeline span is modeled as an Euler–Bernoulli beam subject to instantaneous flow-induced forces and solved using finite element basis functions in space and an unconditionally stable Newmark-type discretization scheme in time. At each time step, the instantaneous incremental displacement is fed back to the fluid flow solver, where the position of the pipeline is updated to compute the resulting instantaneous flow field and associated flow-induced forces. Numerical predictions from the FSI model are compared to current tank experimental measurements of a pipeline span subject to uniform free-stream currents.