Experimental study of parametric vibrations of arc-shaped tubes with pulsating fluid flow

The dynamics of curved tubes with fluid flow fixed on both sides was studied experimentally. Two cases were studied in which the curved tubes differed in curvature. Tests were performed with the flow without pulsation to determine the natural frequencies and with pulsation to determine the interesting dynamic phenomena occurring in the system. Two alternative measurement systems were used to study the motion of the tubes, a contact one based on accelerometers and a non-contact one based on optical technology. Acceleration and displacement time-series were analysed to determine the nature of the motion of the tubes. It was confirmed that the eigenfrequencies of the curved systems are insensitive to flow velocity which is consistent with the extensible centreline hypothesis. The interesting dynamics of tubes with pulsatile flow, the possibility of excitation of simple, combination parametric resonances, including several different combination resonances simultaneously, were identified. The vibrations in the simple resonances were polyharmonic and in the combination resonances quasi-periodic. The motion of the tubes was three-dimensional in nature and its complexity increased with increasing excitation amplitude. It was found that increasing the curvature of the tube reduced the possibility of excitation of parametric vibration.