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FLUID-STRUCTURE INTERACTIONS IN OFFSHORE ENGINEERING (offshore FSI)
Start date: Aug 1, 2008, End date: Nov 30, 2010 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) is a multidisciplinary field which involves fluid mechanics, structural mechanics and vibrations, complex techniques for instrumentation and data analysis and numerical methods applied to computational fluid and solid mechanics. Two main FSI topics will be investigated during the course of the fellowship: Wave impact mechanics and vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) on offshore structures. There is a need for data collection regarding deformation of bluff body shapes under wave impacts, for different wave heights, lengths, steepness, and the geometry and immersion of the impacted structures. Surface vessels, floating production systems, and new offshore energy generation devices (wind turbines, wave energy devices,…) are the main applications. On the other hand, there are still major concerns about the VIV of flexible structures: sheared flows, the effect of surface waves and motions on the structural response, array configurations and the effect of developed wakes on downstream structures, are problems that definitely need further study. The same facilities and measurement techniques can be used to study such engineering problems. This fellowship provides the perfect opportunity to master all these techniques and to investigate at the same time, the physics governing that phenomena, with the final objective of being able to understand, characterize, control, suppress or minimize VIV and wave impact loading on marine structures. It is expected that the results of this research will have major impact on design tools and guidelines of marine structures, contributing to increase their safety and reliability. Laboratory experiments are planned for the outgoing phase at Prof. Gharib’s group in the Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories at the CalTech. More experiments in combination with computations are planned for the re-integration phase, at the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering of Universitat Rovira i Virgili.
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