Dynamics and instability of the Karman wake mode induced by periodic forcing

This paper presents some fundamental results on the dynamics of the periodic Karman wake behind a circular cylinder. The wake is treated like a dynamical system. External forcing is then introduced and its effect investigated. The main result obtained is the following. Perturbation of the wake, by controlled cylinder oscillations in the flow direction at a frequency equal to the Karman vortex shedding frequency, leads to instability of the Karman vortex structure. The resulting wake structure oscillates at half the original Karman vortex shedding frequency. For higher frequency excitation the primary pattern involves symmetry breaking of the initially shed symmetric vortex pairs. The Karman shedding phenomenon can be modeled by a nonlinear oscillator. The symmetrical flow perturbations resulting from the periodic cylinder excitation can also be similarly represented by a nonlinear oscillator. The oscillators represent two flow modes. By considering these two nonlinear oscillators, one having inline shedding symmetry and the other having the Karman wake spatio-temporal symmetry, the possible symmetries of subsequent flow perturbations resulting from the modal interaction are determined. A theoretical analysis based on symmetry (group) theory is presented. The analysis confirms the occurrence of a period-doubling instability, which is responsible for the frequency halving phenomenon observed in the experiments. Finally it is remarked that the present findings have important implications for vortex shedding control. Perturbations in the inflow direction introduce 'control' of the Karman wake by inducing a bifurcation which forces the transfer of energy to a lower frequency which is far from the original Karman frequency.