Staggered Grooves for the Suppression of Vortex-Induced Vibration in Flexible Cylinders

Vortex-Induced Vibration (VIV) remains a challenge to the offshore structures such as deepwater riser and subsea pipelines, which require a robust and cost-effective control to circumvent the impact of the dynamic loads and the fatigue damage. While the state-of-the-art helical strakes are effective in the suppression of VIV amplitudes, they cause a higher drag force and bending moment on the submerged structure. In this work, we numerically investigate the recently proposed staggered groove concept to reduce both the VIV amplitudes and the drag force. The staggered groove is constructed by aligning the square grooves alternatively along the spanwise (axial) direction of the cylinder. The performance of the staggered groove concept is examined in three dimensions for two VIV configurations at subcritical Reynolds number (Re) namely: (i) two-degree-of-freedom elastically mounted rigid cylinder (Re = 3000–10000), and (ii) pinned-pinned flexible cylinder in a uniform current flow at Re = 4800. Their characteristic responses and the vortex dynamics are compared to their plain cylinder counterparts. For the two VIV configurations, our results show a remarkable reduction of both the peak vibration amplitude and the drag force up to 40% and 20%, respectively. Further analysis has shown that such reduction is related to the diminishing of the spanwise correlation of hydrodynamic forces due to the alternating alignment of the grooves. Such effect on the spanwise correlation leads to the broadening of the frequency spectra of the forces, thereby reduces the average power transferred to the cylinder and leads to the VIV suppression.