Bridge deck flutter derivatives: Efficient numerical evaluation exploiting their interdependence

Abstract

Increasing the efficiency in the process to numerically compute the flutter derivatives of bridge deck sections is desirable to advance the application of CFD based aerodynamic design in industrial projects. In this article, a 2D unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) approach adopting Menter׳s SST k-ω turbulence model is employed for computing the flutter derivatives and the static aerodynamic characteristics of two well known examples: a rectangular cylinder showing a completely reattached flow and the generic G1 section representative of streamlined deck sections. The analytical relationships between flutter derivatives reported in the literature are applied with the purpose of halving the number of required numerical simulations for computing the flutter derivatives. The solver of choice has been the open source code OpenFOAM. It has been found that the proposed methodology offers results which agree well with the experimental data and the accuracy of the estimated flutter derivatives is similar to the results reported in the literature where the complete set of numerical simulations has been performed for both heave and pitch degrees of freedom.