Effect of surface roughness and initial gap on the vortex-induced vibrations of a freely vibrating cylinder in the vicinity of a plane wall

Abstract We studied the effects of the surface roughness and initial gap on the responses of vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of a circular cylinder near a stationary plane wall, employing numerical methods. The VIV response amplitudes, lock-in regions, hydrodynamic forces, VIV trajectories and flow fields for three different surface roughnesses and two different initial gaps were systematically compared. The results reveal that the reduced velocity range can be divided into three regions based on the VIV amplitude as pre-lock-in, lock-in, and post-lock-in regions. The width of the lock-in region is not sensitive to the variation of the roughness. The mean drag coefficient has a decreasing tendency with the increased roughness. For a small initial gap, the clockwise wall boundary layer vortices has coalesced with the clockwise vortices shed from the upper side of the cylinder, which further suppresses the shedding of the counter-clock wise vortices from the lower side of the cylinder. The vortex shedding flow pattern displays a weak 2S mode. However, for a large initial gap, there is no coalescing action operating in the wake region and hence most of the vortex shedding flow patterns show an asymmetric 2S mode.