Stability of helical tubes conveying fluid

Abstract

We study the linear stability of elastic collapsible tubes conveying fluid, when the equilibrium configuration of the tube is helical. A particular case of such tubes, commonly encountered in applications, is represented by quarter- or semi-circular tubular joints used at pipe's turning points. The stability theory for pipes with non-straight equilibrium configurations, especially for collapsible tubes, allowing dynamical change of the cross-section, has been elusive as it is difficult to accurately develop the dynamic description via traditional methods. We develop a methodology for studying the three-dimensional dynamics of collapsible tubes based on the geometric variational approach. We show that the linear stability theory based on this approach allows for a complete treatment for arbitrary three-dimensional helical configurations of collapsible tubes by reduction to an equation with constant coefficients. We discuss new results on stability loss of straight tubes caused by the cross-sectional area change. Finally, we develop a numerical algorithm for computation of the linear stability using our theory and present the results of numerical studies for both straight and helical tubes.