Journal of Fluids and Structures (1989) 3, 115-122

THE ACTIVE CONTROL OF VORTEX S H E D D I N G

J. E. FFOWCSWILLIAMSAND B. C. ZHAO

Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, U.K.

(Received 13 April 1988 and in revised form 6 September 1988)
This paper describes an active method of controlling vortex shedding from a circular
cylinder at Reynolds number 400. The control was effected by an acoustic feedback of
signals taken from hot-wires in the wake of the cylinder. The velocity fluctuation at the
nominal vortex shedding frequency is reduced throughout the wake, in places by more
than 30 decibels. Reduced also is the harmonic content though those elements were not
excited from the control signal. Shedding could be suppressed by switching on the
controller, the effect taking two or three vortex shedding periods to take hold. Similarly,
when the controller was switched off, the natural state was recovered in about ten cycles.
1. I N T R O D U C T I O N
STEADYFLOWINCIDENTON bluff bodies is usually unstable and develops into an unsteady
wake. The wake is often turbulent and chaotic but supports also large eddy structures
of varying degree of order, the most regular and familiar kind being Karman's vortex
street. The regularity of the street depends on the Reynolds number, surface roughness
and turbulence level etc., the spectrum peaking at a Strouhal number that is only
weakly dependent on other parameters. The evolution of the vortex train from the
smoothly incident flow is still not fullyunderstood, though it is clear that the movement
of the point at which the flow separates from the surface is a determining feature of the
process. Indeed details of steady separated flows are still beyond theoretical description
and their numerical modelling usually rests on some empirical fixing of the separation
points, the results being sensitive to the way those fixes are made. If there is any
causality implied in that observation then it suggests that a weak perturbation to the
velocity (having the greatest relative effect in the stagnant vicinity of the separation
points) might alter the vortex structure through a movement of the separation point.
The steady flow develops unsteady characteristics because the flow is unstable; small
perturbations grow exponentially when they are small enough to conform with linear
theory. The mature ordered structure probably depends on its infant form, so again
there is the thought that very small perturbations (which are huge relative to an
exponentially small early instability) can exert significant influence on the unsteady
large scale structure of the wake. Whether or not these views conform with the
essential physics of the process is uncertain, but there is strong evidence that weak
perturbations do influence the structure of the highly non-linear unsteady wake, and
that influence can sometimes be dramatic. There is nothing to lock the relative phase of
vortex shedding along the span of a rigid cylinder in uniform flow, so the cylinder is
subject only to the small imbalance force of the randomly phased natural loading.
However, when the cylinder responds to that small force and oscillates coherently
along its span, the small movement acts to phase-lock the shedding process. Then the
coherent spanwise loading provides a much greater force to which the cylinder
responds more vigorously. Vigorous movement can further stimulate and generally
influence the shedding process. The 'galloping' cable problem [1] is perhaps the earliest
0889-9746/89/020115 + 08 $03.00

(~ 1989 Academic Press Limited

116

J. E. FFOWCS WILLIAMS A N D B. C. Z H A O

association of minor perturbations with major unsteady load changes. A body

suspended in a wind has natural frequencies of transverse oscillation, and whenever the
body vibrates it is subjected to unsteady loads which can often stimulate further the
body vibration: that is the 'galloping' phenomenon.
It is the relative motion between the body and the oncoming stream that controls this
perturbation method for influencing vortex shedding behaviour, so all the features
induced by cylinder response can be also induced by a perturbation of the incident
flow. Dramatic effects of initially weak perturbations are known to occur in the 'Parker
resonance' [2] where a confined acoustic field supports resonant modes which perturb
the flow to induce vortex shedding and unsteady loads of a kind that further stimulate
the acoustic field, that process growing into a finite-amplitude limit cycle of great
strength relative to the that of the sound which started it.
The velocity fluctuations in the Karman street are huge in comparison with those in
bearable sound waves, yet there are numerous reports of the street behaviour being
influenced by the presence of sound. Spanwise coherence can be acoustically
stimulated, the phase of the shedding process can be controlled by sound, the
frequency at which vortices shed can sometimes be controlled with a directed sound
wave as can the amplitude of the unsteady loads. These aspects are reported by Blevins
[3] and the subject is well summarised in Bearman's review [4] from which it is clear
that the susceptibility of the Karman street to sound is now part of established wisdom.
When R. A. Shaw [5] became convinced in an acoustic influence, some forty years ago,
his contemporaries thought him distinctly eccentric! It is now not so silly to suggest that
the periodic vortex flow is the end state of an instability with exponential growth
characteristics in its infancy. These are characteristics of linear perturbations, conforming to the same constraint as sound. That feature makes the flow receptive to subtle
acoustic influence, a weak stimulus at the right frequency being naturally amplified into
the fully grown vortex, the strength then presumably depending on the balance
between the rates of energy supply and dissipation, as in a non-linear limit cycle of an
oscillator that is unstable at small enough amplitude. There are simpler phenomena
which share these properties of acoustic sensitivity, instability and a periodic end state.
Since these are better understood their study might provide a useful pointer to other
aspects of the vortex shedding process; combustion oscillations provide a good
example.
Flames are sensitive to sound and unsteady combustion is also a source of sound.
Flames, especially when confined in acoustically resonant spaces, can be stimulated by
sound to produce more sound which in turn produces more stimulus--and so on, the
essential characteristics of an unstable cycle growing exponentially in time. The Rijke
tube is a classical example of this, in which a flame confined in an open pipe excites
loud organ pipe tones whose amplitudes are set by a non-linear energy balance. A
weak sound field provokes the flame to produce more sound than is lost by damping in
the cycle and the linear response of the system is an oscillation of exponentially
increasing strength. That is the natural system; sound is an essential element of the
process. But sound can be manipulated by the technique of anti-sound, a secondary
sound constructed to interfere destructively with the first to produce silence. When that
technique is applied to the Rijke tube its instability is extinguished at the touch of a
switch. That was done by Dines [6] in an apparatus that was then subjected to an
exhaustive analysis by Heckl [7]. There is no doubt at all that the control of that sound
field brings with it the stabilisation of the combustion process. This technique now
seems likely to find practical application in the control of 'reheat buzz', a performancelimiting instability of aircraft propulsion systems, cf. Bloxsidge, Dowling et al. [8].

117

ACTIVE CONTROL OF VORTEX SHEDDING

Anti-sound involves a control system in which the sound field is sampled to provide a
signal that is processed and used to drive loudspeakers whose sound is the inverse of
the unwanted field, cf. Ffowcs Williams [9]. Dines [6] used this technique to stabilize a
flame; does it hold any promise for controlling the vortices shed in flow over bluff
bodies? That is the issue addressed in this paper and the answer is that it does.
We have conducted preliminary experiments that indicate a way of actively
preventing vortex formation. The wake of a circular cylinder was sampled' with a
hot-wire anemometer, the signal processed and fed into a loudspeaker mounted in the
wall of the wind tunnel and the vortex wake examined with a secondary hot-wire
system. We give results of experiments in which the component of velocity in the wake
at the vortex shedding frequency is reduced by more than thirty decibels by this
technique. Though we do not understand the full mechanics of this process, we think
the findings are interesting enough to be reported at this stage.
2. DESCRIPTION OF EXPERIMENTAL APPARATUS AND
INSTRUMENTATION
The apparatus used for our experiment is illustrated in Figure 1, and a block diagram
of the instrumentation is presented in Figure 2. All experiments were performed in the
rectangular test section of a 25 cm x 35 cm wind tunnel in the speed range 1-20 m/s.

.)

~ Loudspeaker
Figure 1. Illustration of the wind tunnel.

(2)

Hot-wire

(t)

Filter

temperature
anemometer

Itemperature
Constant- I~

anemometer

I]

I
I

Spectrum
analyser

I Oscilloscope

Filter

I Recorder

Preamplifier

H filter
and
pass J lI Power
8tphasel---changer J J amplifier
r

Controllingloop

1
Figure 2. Schematic illustration of the control system.

118

J. E . F F O W C S

WILLIAMS

AND

B . C. Z H A O

The sensors are two hot-wires of type D I S A 55F31, set up with their wires parallel to
the cylinder axis. One is positioned within the upper shear layer, about 1.5 d
downstream and 0.8 d above the axis of the cylinder of diameter d. The signal from the
first hot-wire feeds the controlling loop; the other wire which is movable is used to
examine the change in the velocity fluctuation in the wake. The ends of the smooth
copper cylinder were rigidly fixed to the side walls. No cylinder vibration was detected
during any part of the experiments.
The controlling loop consists of filters, a phase changer, an amplifier and a
louspeaker mounted rigidly to the bottom of the wind tunnel.
The data were processed on-line with a Hewlett-Packard digital signal analyser of
type 5420B and the fluctuating velocity at the vortex shedding frequency band was
displayed on an oscilloscope and recorded.
3. E X P E R I M E N T A L R E S U L T S
The experiment has been performed on several cylinders with different diameter at
different wind speed. The Reynolds numbers based on the cylinder diameter and wind
speed varied in these experiments from 400 to 12,000, and at all these conditions we
were able to influence vortex shedding with our feedback system. H e r e we present
typical results obtained with a cylinder of diameter 0.6 cm at a speed of 1 m/sec, i.e. at
a Reynolds number 400. The vortex shedding frequency is 32.8 Hz.
At this Reynolds number, it is known from measurement with hot-wire anemometers
in the wake of the cylinder, that there are irregular velocity fluctuations, and that the
shedding frequency wanders randomly about the nominal frequency; indeed this was a
characteristic we observed in our experiment.
With this cylinder, we put the hot-wire probe at a position of 0.9 cm downstream and
0.45cm above the axis. The measurement shows that the hot-wire signal at this
position is dominated by elements at harmonics of the vortex shedding frequency.

c0

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Controller 0-4
switched
on here

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0.6

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0-8

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I'OAkcontroller
switched
off here

I
I,2

Time (s)

Figure 3. A time record of the first hot-wire signal following the activation of the controller and its
subsequent de-activation.

119

ACTIVE CONTROL OF VORTEX SHEDDING

,/Spectrum
with the controller
'~
phase reversed

--20

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Natural case (no

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-60
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-70

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0

20

40

60

80

I00

120

140

160

180

200

Frequency (Hz)

Figure 4. The spectrum of the first hot-wire signal in the three cases;--, natural, -----controlled; and, with
the controller phase reversed.

When the controlling loop was switched on and the loudspeaker energised, fine
adjustment of the gain and phase of the controlling signal gave rise to a virtual
elimination of the fluctuation at the vortex shedding frequency. Figure 3 is an
illustration of this change, being a record of the hot-wire output. Figure 4 gives the
frequency spectrum, where it can be seen that the harmonics typical of an oscillator in
-30

-40 v

-50
co

~- -60

-70
0

I0

12

14

16

18

20

22

24

26

Distance downstream (didrneters)

Figure 5. The variation of the spectral level at the vortex shedding frequency with distance downstream in
O, the natural case (no loudspeakers); and [3, the controlled case.

120

J. E. FFOWCS WILLIAMS AND B. C. Z H A O

a non-linear limit cycle are eliminated together with the fundamental, an aspect
supporting that interpretation of the vortex shedding process. A phase reversal of the
loudspeaker signal at this condition brought about an enhancement of the fluctuation
and that case is also shown in Figure 4.
Figure 5 illustrates the reduction in the spectrum level at the vortex shedding
frequency of the signal from the second hot wire as it was moved to various
downstream positions in the wake. The figure shows some 10 decibels of reduction at
almost all positions, the reduction being 30 decibels at the position of the first hot-wire.
The sensitivity of the system to the gain in the controller circuit is of interest, and the
measurement of this is illustrated in Figure 6. As the gain is increased from zero, the
loudspeaker voltage increases until its effect causes suppression of the vortex shedding
and a reduction in the hot-wire signal. Further gain increase is more than compensated
for by the effectiveness of the control, resulting in a reduction of both the hot-wire
signal and the loudspeaker voltage. Finally when the gain is very high, an instability of

--26
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co
&
tO

N a t u r a l case
(no loudspeaker)
(

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a

-40

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-8

R.m.s. v o l t a g e to l o u d s p e a k e r

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-6

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--4

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--2

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at 3 2 . 8 Hz ( d B )

F i g u r e 6. T h e sensitivity of the s y s t e m to i n c r e a s e in c o n t r o l l e r gain at p h a s e fixed for o p t i m a l s u p p r e s s i o n .

a different kind is found. We have not established any of the characteristics of this
instability, and it is an aspect we intend to study further. The effectiveness of the
control to phase variation in the control loop is also of interest and this is shown in
Figure 7. From this preliminary measurement it is clear that the behaviour of the
system is not straightforward and we will be investigating it in detail in our future
work.
Finally we present a sample result to indicate how the natural response recovers
following the switching-off of the controller. The hot-wire signal in the narrow band of
frequencies around the vortex shedding frequency that is shown in Figure 8 seems to
grow exponentially initially, though the evidence here is not yet strong enough to be
definite. We have shown on the diagram a line corresponding to exponential growth at
a rate where the signal increases by a factor of ten in two vortex shedding periods and
we shall be working in future to establish this aspect of the system with more
confidence.

121

A C T I V E C O N T R O L OF V O R T E X S H E D D I N G

_20i
-25

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I00

. . .~. .

_Ncfurclc~eker)

30

.E

--

-35

-40

50

150 200 250 300

Phaseof controller(degrees)

350

400

Figure 7. The effectiveness of the control as a f u n c t i o n o f the phase in the control circuit with the
optimal gain.

u 50
m

io(tirne/2 cycle periods)

o-

40
.c_ ~
m=
~2

30

-8
X2~2

20

E
~-

4 -

I
0

__

0-1
0-2
Timefollowingthe de-activationofthecontroller(dB)

Figure 8. A n illustration o f how the signal from the first hot-wire in the frequency band processed by the
controller adjusts following the switching off of the controller.

4. CONCLUSION
We have been able to control vortex shedding from a circular cylinder with a control
system operating in the frequency band about the main vortex shedding frequency.
With that control, both the fundamental and the harmonics were reduced in level. This
indicates to us that the vortex system is in a non-linear natural balance, the linear
response being one of exponential growth. This linear response is attainable only with
the control system and the exponential growth becomes evident following the

122

J. E. FFOWCS WILLIAMS AND B. C. ZHAO

de-activation of the controller. We suspect that there are many different control
strategies capable of imposing stability on the natural system and that the one we have
used is merely one member of that class. W e stress that our experiments are still in a
very early stage but we are much encouraged by the degree to which we have already
been able to modify the shedding process through feedback control. We hope others
will share our interest.
REFERENCES

1. J. P. DEN HARTOG 1947 Mechanical Vibrations. New York: McGraw-Hill.

2. R. PARKER 1966 Resonance effects in vortex shedding from parallel plates, some experimental observations. Journal of Sound and Vibration 4, 62-72.
3. R. D. BLEVINS 1985 The effect of the sound on vortex shedding from cylinders. Journal of
Fluid Mechanics 161, 217-237.
4. P. W. BEARMAN1984 Vortex shedding from oscillating bluff bodies. Annual Review of Fluid
Mechanics 16, 195-222.
5. R. A. SHAW 1949 A theory of acoustic frequency and resonance controlling factors in
Aerodynamics. Aeronautical Research Council Paper 12,376, F.M. 1357.
6. P. DINES 1983 Active control of flame noise. Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University.
7. M. A. HECKL 1985 Heat sources in acoustic resonators. Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University.
8. G. J. BLOXSIDGE, A. P. DOWLING, N. HOOPER and P. J. LANGHORNE1987 Active control of
reheat buzz. A I A A 25th Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Reno, Nevada; also in A I A A Journal
1988.
9. J. E. FFowcs WILLIAMS1984 Anti-sound. Proceedings of the Royal Society (London) A395,
63-88.