Numerical simulation of vortex induced vibrations in heat exchanger tube bundle at low reynolds number

It is well known that when the tube is forced to vibrate or is naturally excited to sufficient amplitudes by flow-induced forces,vortices shedding phenomena occurs at downstream of a tube which leads to vibration in the tube. two-dimensional numerical simulation model for the computation of flow induced vibration of heat exchanger tube bundle subjected to cross- flow is accomplished in present research. computational fluid dynamics (cfd) tool,gambit (grid generation) and ansys fluent (fluid flow analysis) are utilized during numerical investigations. k-epsilon model has been used to solve the navier-stokes equations. lift coefficient graph derived from analysis is used to predict the vortex shedding frequency using fast fourier transform (fft). the results of flow rate,strouhal number,reduced velocity,natural frequency of tube as obtained from the experimental data has been verified numerically for a reynolds number range of 4.45 × 104< re <4.65 × 104. it is concluded that experimental results are well in agreement with the numerical results. © 2017 aname publication. all rights reserved.