Flow-induced instability and nonlinear dynamics of a tube array considering the effect of a clearance gap

Fluidelastic instability and nonlinear dynamics of tube bundles is a key issue in a steam generator. Especially, once the post-instability motion of the tube becomes larger than the clearance gap to other tubes, effective contact or impact between the tubes under consideration and the other tube inevitable. There is seldom theoretical analysis to the nonlinear dynamic characteristics of a tube array in two-phase flow. In this paper, experimental and numerical studies were utilized to obtain the critical velocity of the flow-induced instability of a rotated triangular tube array. The calculation results agreed well with the experimental data. To explore the post-instability dynamics of the tube array system, a Runge-Kutta scheme was used to solve the nonlinear governing equations of tube motion. The numerical results indicated that, when the flow pitch velocity is larger than the critical velocity, the tube array system is undergoing a limit cycle motion, and the dynamic characteristics of the tube array are almost similar for different void fractions