Drag Reduction of Deepwater Risers by the Use of Helical Grooves

Author(s):  
Shan Huang ◽  
David Clelland ◽  
Sandy Day ◽  
Richard James

Model tests were carried out in a towing tank to investigate the effects of helical grooves on the drag loading of stationary circular cylinders in uniform and steady currents. A series of models were made and tested, including smooth and rough cylinders with and without grooves. The maximum Reynolds number achieved in the tests was about 4×105. The comparative results between the smooth and grooved cylinders show that the helical grooves reduce the drag loading by between 18 and 25% depending upon the cylinder surface roughness and the Reynolds number. This is a continuation of our work published in OMAE06 in Hamburg on VIV suppression by the use of helical grooves.

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (24) ◽  
pp. 8237
Author(s):  
Paulo Guimarães de Moraes ◽  
Luiz Antonio Alcântara Pereira

This paper contributes by investigating surface roughness effects on temporal history of aerodynamic loads and vortex shedding frequency of two circular cylinders in tandem arrangement. The pair of cylinders is immovable; of equal outer diameter, D; and its geometry is defined by the dimensionless center-to-center pitch ratio, L/D. Thus, a distance of L/D = 4.5 is chosen to characterize the co-shedding regime, where the two shear layers of opposite signals, originated from each cylinder surface, interact generating counter-rotating vortical structures. A subcritical Reynolds number of Re = 6.5 × 104 is chosen for the test cases, which allows some comparisons with experimental results without roughness effects available in the literature. Two relative roughness heights are adopted, nominally ε/D = 0.001 and 0.007, aiming to capture the sensitivity of the applied numerical approach. Recent numerical results published in the literature have reported that the present two-dimensional model of surface roughness effects is able to capture both drag reduction and full cessation of vortex shedding for an immovable cylinder near a moving ground. That roughness model was successfully blended with a Lagrangian vortex method using sub-grid turbulence modeling. Overall, the effects of relative roughness heights on flows past two cylinders reveal changing of behavior of the vorticity dynamics, in which drag reduction, intermittence of vortex shedding, and wake destruction are identified under certain roughness effects. This kind of study is very useful for engineering conservative designs. The work is also motivated by scarcity of results previous discussing flows past cylinders in cross flow with surface roughness effects.


1975 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmond Szechenyi

In wind-tunnel tests on bluff bodies the Reynolds number is often limited to values that are very much smaller than those of the flows being simulated. In such cases the experiments may have no practical significance whatsoever since both the fluctuating and the steady aerodynamic phenomena can vary considerably with Reynolds number.This difficulty was encountered in an investigation of supercritical incompressible flow over cylinders, and an attempt at artificially increasing the Reynolds number by means of surface roughness was made. In order to evaluate this simulation technique, the influence of various grades of surface roughness on the aerodynamic forces acting on cylinders of different diameters was studied over a wide range of Reynolds numbers in two very different wind tunnels. The results allow very positive conclusions to be drawn.


Author(s):  
Gustavo R. S. Assi ◽  
Peter W. Bearman

Experiments have been carried out on two-dimensional devices fitted to a rigid length of circular cylinder to investigate the efficiency of pivoting parallel plates as wake-induced vibration suppressors. Measurements are presented for a circular cylinder with low mass and damping which is free to respond in the cross-flow direction. It is shown how VIV and WIV can be practically eliminated by using free to rotate parallel plates on a pair of tandem cylinders. Unlike helical strakes, the device achieves VIV suppression with 33% drag reduction when compare to a pair of fixed tandem cylinders at the same Reynolds number. These results prove that suppressors based on parallel plates have great potential to suppress VIV and WIV of offshore structures with considerable drag reduction.


1961 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Gerrard

The oscillating lift and drag on circular cylinders are determined from measurements of the fluctuating pressure on the cylinder surface in the range of Reynolds number from 4 × 103 to just above 105.The magnitude of the r.m.s. lift coefficient has a maximum of about 0.8 at a Reynolds number of 7 × 104 and falls to about 0.01 at a Reynolds number of 4 × 103. The fluctuating component of the drag was determined for Reynolds numbers greater than 2 × 104 and was found to be an order of magnitude smaller than the lift.


Author(s):  
Shan Huang ◽  
Neil Kitney

Towing tank model tests at high Reynolds numbers, up to 1.1×106, were carried out in order to investigate the effects of the triple-starting helical grooves on drag reduction of smooth and rough circular cylinders in uniform cross flow. In total, four cylinders were tested including smooth and rough cylinders with and without helical grooves.


Author(s):  
Gustavo R. S. Assi ◽  
Peter W. Bearman

Experiments have been carried out on two-dimensional devices fitted to a rigid length of circular cylinder to investigate the efficiency of pivoting control plates as VIV suppressors. Measurements are presented for a circular cylinder with low mass and damping which is free to respond in the cross-flow direction. It is shown how vortex-induced vibration can be practically eliminated by using free to rotate, two-dimensional control plates. Unlike helical strakes, the devices achieve VIV suppression with drag reduction. The device producing the largest drag reduction was found to have a drag coefficient equal to about 70% of that for a plain cylinder at the same Reynolds number.


2014 ◽  
Vol 988 ◽  
pp. 134-142
Author(s):  
Sheila Devasahayam ◽  
Prasad Yarlagadda

Superhydrophobicity is directly related to the wettability of the surfaces. Cassie-Baxter state relating to geometrical configuration of solid surfaces is vital to achieving the Superhydrophobicity and to achieve Cassie-Baxter state the following two criteria need to be met: 1) Contact line forces overcome body forces of unsupported droplet weight and 2) The microstructures are tall enough to prevent the liquid that bridges microstructures from touching the base of the microstructures [1]. In this paper we discuss different measurements used to characterise/determine the superhydrophobic surfaces.Keywords: Wettability, contact angle, contact angle hysteresis, contact time, surface roughness, drag reduction measurements, morphology, surface friction, Reynolds number


1983 ◽  
Vol 105 (4) ◽  
pp. 464-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Buresti

An analysis was carried out to check whether certain existing universal wake numbers can characterize the cross-flow around roughened circular cylinders in transitional regimes. The results confirmed the soundness of the idea of the existence of a link between the drag coefficient of a bluff body, its pressure distribution, and the frequency of the shedding of vortices in its wake. In particular, Bearman’s number and Griffin’s number were shown to be able to describe this link with sufficient accuracy and to be a function of the Reynolds number based on the typical dimension of the surface roughness. A physical interpretation of Griffin’s number was also given which permits to link the drag force with the velocity of the potential flow at separation and the frequency of vortex shedding.


2017 ◽  
Vol 813 ◽  
pp. 382-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Klausmann ◽  
Bodo Ruck

The present paper describes the effect of drag reduction of circular cylinders due to a porous coating on their leeward sides. To investigate the coating effect, experiments were conducted in a wind tunnel of Goettingen type. Systematic drag measurements were carried out for different cylinder configurations and flow velocities. The drag measurements were complemented by pressure and particle image velocimetry (PIV) flow field measurements around selected cylinders. The Reynolds numbers were varied in the subcritical range of $3\times 10^{4}<Re<1.4\times 10^{5}$. The results show that a thin porous layer on the leeward side, either incorporated in the cylinder shape or applied on the cylinder surface, leads to an increase of base pressure on the leeward side of the cylinder. It causes a reduction of drag and dampens oscillation amplitudes when compared to a cylinder without coating. Results obtained for different configurations with varying key parameters (coating angles, layer thicknesses and pore sizes of the porous material) clearly indicate the drag-reducing and amplitude-damping potential of leeward coating. The amount of drag reduction and amplitude damping depends on the combination of key parameters. It was demonstrated that the lowered drag coefficients $c_{d}$ were almost constant in the tested range of Reynolds numbers. A maximum reduction of drag of 13.2 % was measured. In addition, the results revealed a strong reduction of the pressure fluctuations around cylinders with a leeward coating due to the shift of the vortex region further downstream.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document