Passive and adaptive vibration suppression of pipes conveying fluid with variable velocity

A passive and adaptive control method for stabilizing a pipe conveying fluid is presented. Owing to fluid-pipe interactions, pipes are subjected to excessive vibrations. Classical passive control methods are only valid for stabilizing the pipes over a narrow range of flow velocities. In this paper, the theory of nonlinear targeted energy transfer (TET) is applied to suppress the excessive vibration of a pipe by using an essentially nonlinear attachment, which is called a nonlinear energy sink (NES). Numerical evidence for a passive TET between the pipe and NES is proposed. Results show that the NES can robustly absorb and dissipate a major portion of the vibrational energy of the pipe.