Numerical simulation of vortex-induced vibration of a circular cylinder at low mass and damping with different turbulent models

Due to the great damage to widely utilized flexible structures in ocean engineering, vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of such long flexible marine structures is still a hot issue that needs more theoretical research, and CFD techniques become gradually indispensable to study the VIV problem. In this paper, two-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are adopted to investigate transverse VIV of elastically mounted rigid cylinder with low mass-damping, and two typical turbulent models are applied to solve the RANS equations: RNG k-epsilon model and SST k-epsilon model. By comparing the cylinder displacement response and vortex shedding modes of three different response branches, analysis of differences between two turbulence models are presented. The numerical results indicate that SST k-epsilon model is more appropriate for VIV of the elastically mounted rigid cylinder. Subsequently, other hydrodynamic coefficients obtained by SST k-epsilon model are discussed and compared with previous research in detail. This investigation provides theoretical evidence for the numerical simulation of VIV of marine riser in engineering application.