Investigation of Fluidelastic Instability in Normal Triangular Tube Arrays Subjected to Air Flow

Abstract This work presents the results of an experimental investigation of fluidelastic instability (FEI) in a normal triangular array. Several tube array configurations were considered, including a single flexible tube, a row of three tubes, a kernel of three flexible tubes, a kernel of seven flexible tubes, and a kernel of 17 tubes. Each case studied four pitch to diameter ratios. This study investigates the stability characteristics in the transverse and streamwise directions. The findings were carefully evaluated in comparison to established results documented in the existing literature. The major contributions of the current study are a detailed investigation of the streamwise stability behavior as well as the only complete dataset in terms of the effect of the pitch ratio.