Tube bundle heat exchangers are frequently used components in apparatus and plant design. There is an economic motivation for increasing the efficiency from the thermal point of view. Therefore, flow velocities were increased and the tube wall thicknesses were decreased more and more in the past. But this, as a consequence, led to a number of cases of damage due to flow-induced vibration. Tube bundle vibration due to cross flow might remain stable reaching low or moderate vibrational amplitudes or might even become unstable due to resonance or flutter, followed by vibrations of unlimited amplitudes. The inflow velocity at the threshold of fluidelastic instability is called "critical inflow velocity".
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