Flutter instabilities of cantilevered piezoelectric pipe conveying fluid

In this article, a nonlinear model was developed for a cantilevered piezoelectric pipe conveying fluid that included geometric nonlinearity and electromechanical coupling. The Galerkin method discretized the system in order to characterize its behavior. Critical flutter velocity and its associated unstable mode can be determined based on linear analysis. Due to the presence of piezoelectric materials, the critical flutter velocity depends on the resistive piezoelectric damping and electromechanical coupling. This added resistive piezoelectric damping tends to decrease the flutter velocity. Comprehensive simulations were also conducted to characterize the post-flutter behaviors. System parameters including amplitude, deformed pipe shape, and collected voltage in piezoelectric materials were calculated. The system will undergo limited cycle oscillation when the fluid velocity passes the flutter velocity. Parametric studies were conducted as well to investigate the system responses under different flow velocities. Physical insights can be collected from these simulation results to conduct piezoelectric pipe design and performance predictions for future pipe vibration control and energy harvesting applications.