Experimental study of the bistable flow in tube arrays

Flow through circular cylinder arrays are commonly found in several engineering application as offshore structures, heat exchangers, transmission lines and chimneys, therefore the understanding of the several phenomena that occur due the interaction between flowing fluid and these structures is very important. This work analyzes experimentally the presence of phenomenon called bistable or biased flow, which is able to cause alternations on the flow modes in cylinder arrays. For the experimental work, two cylinders are placed side-by-side, or forming a tube bank with in line arrangement. The first arrangement corresponds to the case where the phenomenon is easily detected, and in line tube bank, the phenomenon has been also found. The experiments were performed in a wind channel using hot wire anemometry additionally to the classical statistic and spectral tools, wavelet transforms are used. The bistable flow can be an important generator of dynamic instabilities, since it alternates the lift and drag coefficients, thus alternating the structure dynamic response. Copyright © 2006 by ABCM.