Sustainable passive vibration control of fuel cells on fluid structure interaction

Abstract

A passive vibration control study has been carried out to understand the nature of fluid structure interaction on control rods. Further to identify the possible ways to preserve the structural integrity by isolating the impact of vibration. In regards, by employing multiple control tubes to assess the characteristics of induced vibration and flow dynamics over a fuel cell structures in different orientation at a subcritical Reynolds number (Re=18,685) has been proposed. An experimental and numerical investigation has been performed to understand the influence of control tubes over the test structure. The computational study has been performed by employing the Large Eddy Simulation technique to estimate the flow characteristics and it dynamics over the test structures. Similarly, the experimental investigation also focussed on understanding nature of control rods subjected fluid flow with an influence of control tubes. In this study nine different cases were taken into consideration for the better understanding on the proposed idea. It is mainly focussed on the amplitude response with respect to the force coefficients. Further, it examines the near wake flow structure, instantaneous flow field, mean flow field, turbulent intensity, vortex length and mean pressure distribution for all the considered cases. The swirling flow is identified to be more significant in the development of sloping three-dimensional flow structures with a low-frequency force coefficient despite the induced high-frequency force coefficient resulted due to the Karman vortices. In addition, the perfectly organized vortices observed for a larger value of wave sharpness reveals a noteworthy influence on the inconsistency in the lift force. Only a minor peak raise in the amplitude response for the case 4 and case 5 is identified. It is because of the control tubes positioned in the upstream condition causes a blockade effect on the excessive forces on the tube structures, and reduces the displacement effects due to the flow impact directly on the control rods structures. At last, the base pressure coefficient is observed to be $cp\approx 0.96$ along with the stagnation point at $\theta \approx {71}^0$.