Fluid nonlinearities effect on wake oscillator model performance

Vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) need to be accounted for in the design of marine structures such as risers and umbilicals. If a resonance state of the slender structure develops due to its interaction with the surrounding fluid flow, the consequences can be severe resulting in the accelerated fatigue and structural damage. Wake oscillator models allow to estimate the fluid force acting on the structure without complex and time consuming CFD analysis of the fluid domain. However, contemporary models contain a number of empirical coeffcients which are required to be tuned using experimental data. This is often left for the future work with the opened question on how to calibrate a model for a wide range of cases and find out what is working and is not. The current research is focused on the problem of the best choice of the fluid nonlinearities for the base wake oscillator model [1] in order to improve the accuracy of prediction for the cases with mass ratios around 6.0. The paper investigates six nonlinear damping types for two fluid equations of the base model. The calibration is conducted using the data by Stappenbelt and Lalji [2] for 2 degrees-of-freedom rigid structure for mass ratio 6.54. The conducted analysis shows that predicted in-line and cross-flow displacements are more accurate if modelled separately using different damping types than using only one version of the model. The borders of application for each found option in terms of mass ratio are discussed in this work, and appropriate recommendations are provided.