A CFD Study of the Effects of Slots on Energy Harvesting from Flow-Induced Circular Cylinder Vibrations

In this paper, numerical investigations of the harnessed power from Flow-Induced Vibrations of a new modified circular cylinder are performed. The proposed cylinder modification consists in adding two slots located on the front surface of the cylinder, instead of the baseline configuration, usually applied, which consists of a Passive Turbulence Control in form two straight strips. The computations are based on the solution of the Unsteady Reynolds- Averaged Navier-Stokes equations (URANS) coupled with the dynamic equations system describing the cylinder motion, where turbulence is modeled using the two-equation SST k – ω model. The harvested and the harnessed powers are thereafter calculated according to the amplitude and the frequency of the cylinder oscillatory motion. The numerical results show that the slots lead to shift the flow separation point toward the leading edge, which involves higher hydrodynamic instabilities resulting in higher oscillations amplitudes, and thereby a significant enhancement of the harnessed power is noticed.