The study aims to explore flow-induced vibration of shear flow past a circular cylinder. The major parameters in the experiment are the natural frequency of the cylinder, and the velocity and velocity gradient of the shear flow approaching the cylinder. The vibration of the cylinder in a water tunnel were measured by two accelerometers to simultaneously obtain the vibration amplitudes in both the streamwise and cross-stream directions. The experimental results show that in the shear flow the cylinder tends of vibrate the orbits of the cylinder vibration become in the streamwise direction while in uniform flow the cylinder vibrates in all directions in the X-Y plane the tendency is obvious for the cylinder with high natural frequency (13Hz). The orbits of the cylinder with low natural frequency (9Hz) are basically similar in shear flow and in uniform flow.