Insights on the point of contact analysis and characterization of constrained pipelines conveying fluid

Modern methods of nonlinear dynamics including time histories, phase portraits, power spectra, and Poincaré sections are used to characterize the stability and bifurcation regions of a cantilevered pipe conveying fluid with symmetric constraints at the point of contact. In this study, efforts are made to demonstrate the importance of characterizing the system at the arbitrarily positioned symmetric constraints rather than at the tip of the cantilevered pipe. Using the full nonlinear equations of motion and the Galerkin discretization, a nonlinear analysis is performed. After validating the model with previous results using the bifurcation diagrams and achieving full agreement, the bifurcation diagram at the point of contact is further investigated to select key flow velocities of interest. In addition to demonstrating the progression of the selected regions using primarily phase portraits, a detailed comparison is made between the tip and the point of contact at the key flow velocities. In doing so, period doubling, pitchfork bifurcations, grazing bifurcations, sticking, and chaos that occur at the point of contact are found to not always occur at the tip for the same flow speed. Thus, it is shown that in the case of cantilevered pipes with constraints, more accurate characterization of the system is obtained in a specified range of flow velocities by characterizing the system at the point of contact rather than at the tip.