An application of data-driven modeling for hydroelasticity of an elastically supported semi-circular pipe conveying fluid

Purpose The paper aims to develop an efficient data-driven modeling approach for the hydroelastic analysis of a semi-circular pipe conveying fluid with elastic end supports. Besides the structural displacement-dependent unsteady fluid force, the steady one related to structural initial configuration and the variable structural parameters (i.e. the variable support stiffness) are considered in the modeling. Design/methodology/approach The steady fluid force is treated as a pipe preload, and the elastically supported pipe-fluid model is dealt with as a prestressed hydroelastic system with variable parameters. To avoid repeated numerical simulations caused by parameter variation, structural and hydrodynamic reduced-order models (ROMs) instead of conventional computational structural dynamics (CSD) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers are utilized to produce data for the update of the structural, hydrodynamic and hydroelastic state-space equations. Radial basis function neural network (RBFNN), autoregressive with exogenous input (ARX) model as well as proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) algorithm are applied to modeling these two ROMs, and a hybrid framework is proposed to incorporate them. Findings The proposed approach is validated by comparing its predictions with theoretical solutions. When the steady fluid force is absent, the predictions agree well with the “inextensible theory”. The pipe always loses its stability via out-of-plane divergence first, regardless of the support stiffness. However, when steady fluid force is considered, the pipe remains stable throughout as flow speed increases, consistent with the “extensible theory”. These results not only verify the accuracy of the present modeling method but also indicate that the steady fluid force, rather than the extensibility of the pipe, is the leading factor for the differences between the in- and extensible theories. Originality/value The steady fluid force and the variable structural parameters are considered in the data-driven modeling of a hydroelastic system. Since there are no special restrictions on structural configuration, steady flow pattern and variable structural parameters, the proposed approach has strong portability and great potential application for other hydroelastic problems.