General Modelling of Cable Vibrations Using Data Extracted from Physical Simulation

A methodology has been put in place to allow simulation data to be correlated and used to model cable vibrations. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was used to create a database of lift force data on cylinders subjected to forced vibrations at a range of amplitudes and frequencies. Linear regression was found to be suitable for the correlation of the lift force with respect to the local cylinder displacement and velocity when lock-in occurs. The approach has been tested on a cylinder attached to a mass-spring-damper system and compared to fluid-structure interaction simulations that use CFD. After this, the correlated data was used to demonstrate lock-in of a cable vibration, where the classical sinusoidal lift did not lock-in. This approach will allow for a more realistic simulation tool for cable vibrations to be developed, while maintaining a low computational cost relative to the use of CFD. Having such a tool will make study of cable vibrations under a wide range of conditions simpler, which would include the role of multi-mode vibrations and the transient growth of vibrations.