Self-excited oscillations in three-dimensional collapsible tubes: simulating their onset and large-amplitude oscillations

We employ numerical simulations to explore the development of flow-induced self-excited oscillations in three-dimensional collapsible tubes which are subject to boundary conditions (flow rate prescribed at the outflow boundary) that encourage the development of high-frequency oscillations via an instability mechanism originally proposed by Jensen & Heil (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 481, 2003, p. 235). The simulations show that self-excited oscillations tend to arise preferentially from steady equilibrium configurations in which the tube is buckled non-axisymmetrically. We follow the growing oscillations into the large-amplitude regime and show that short tubes tend to approach an approximately axisymmetric equilibrium configuration in which the oscillations decay, whereas sufficiently long tubes develop sustained large-amplitude limit-cycle oscillations. The period of the oscillations and the critical Reynolds number beyond which their amplitude grows are found to be in good agreement with theoretical scaling estimates.