Computational and Experimental Investigation of Supersonic Flow and their Controls

Supersonic open and closed cavity flows are investigated experimentally and computationally. Free stream Mach number of two is set. Schlieren imaging is used to visualise the flow behaviour showing stark differences between open and closed. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used to simulate open cavity of flow with aspect ratio of 4. A rear wall treatment is implemented in order to pursue a simple passive control approach. Good qualitative agreement is achieved between the experimental flow visualisation and the CFD in terms of the expansion-shock waves system. The cavity oscillations are shown to be dominated by the first and third Rossister modes combining to high fluctuations of non-linear nature above the cavity rear edge. A simple rear wall treatment in terms of a hole shows mixed effect on the flow oscillations, RMS contours, and time history density fluctuations are given and analysed.

Design and Characteristics of New Test Facility for Flat Plate Boundary Layer Research

Preliminary results for a new flat plate test facility are presented here in the form of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), flow visualisation, pressure measurements and thermal anemometry. The results from the CFD and flow visualisation show the effectiveness of the plate design, with the trailing edge flap anchoring the stagnation point on the working surface and reducing the extent of the leading edge separation. The flow visualization technique demonstrates the two-dimensionality of the flow in the location where the thermal anemometry measurements are obtained. Measurements of the boundary layer mean velocity profiles compare favourably with the Blasius solution, thereby allowing for comparison of future measurements with the wealth of data available on zero pressure gradient Blasius flows. Results for the skin friction, boundary layer thickness, frictional velocity and wall shear stress are shown to agree well with the Blasius theory, with a maximum experimental deviation from theory of 5%. Two turbulence generating grids have been designed and characterized and it is shown that the turbulence decay downstream of both grids agrees with established correlations. It is also demonstrated that there is little dependence of turbulence on the freestream velocity.