Motion of Vortices Outside a Cylinder

Abstract

The problem of motion of the vortices around an oscillating cylinder in the presence of a uniform flow is considered. The Hamiltonian for vortex motion for the case with no uniform flow and stationary cylinder is constructed, reduced, and constant Hamiltonian (energy) curves are plotted when the system is shown to be integrable according to Liouville. By adding uniform flow to the system and by allowing the cylinder to vibrate, we model the natural vibration of the cylinder in the flow field, which has applications in ocean engineering involving tethers or pipelines in a flow field. We conclude that in the chaotic case forces on the cylinder may be considerably larger than those on the integrable case depending on the initial positions of vortices and that complex phenomena such as chaotic capture and escape occur when the initial positions lie in a certain region.