Crossflow induced vibration of tube banks is experimentally investigated on staggered arrays placed in wind tunnel.
The objective of this study is to find critical velocities giving whirling instability. Above the critical velocities, tube vibration amplitude sharply grows.
The pitch-to-diameter ratios of the used tube array models are 1.29, 1.5 and 1.68, respectively.
Wind tunnel tests are conducted on varying natural frequencies and damping coefficients of the tube model.
By the way, experiments on single tube are conducted and compared with the values on tube banks.
The critical velocity inducing whirling instability increases as the mass-damping parameter increases, and also as the pitch-to-diameter ratio decreases, which is given by
$\frac{V_G}{f_nD} = 7.91(\frac{m_{delta}}{\rho{D^2})^{0.35}$ for pitch-to-diameter ratio of 1.29,
$\frac{V_G}{f_nD} = 5.24(\frac{m_{delta}}\rho{D^2})^{0.38}$ for pitch-to-diameter ratio of 1.5, and
$\frac{V_G}{f_nD} = 4.84(\frac{m_{delta}}{\rho{D^2})^{0.40}$ for pitch-to-diameter ratio of 1.68, respectively.
