Active attenuation of a trailing vortex inspired by a parabolized stability analysis

Abstract

Designing effective control for complex three-dimensional flow fields proves to be non-trivial. Often, intuitive control strategies lead to suboptimal control. To navigate the control space, we use a linear parabolized stability analysis to guide the design of a control scheme for a trailing vortex flow field aft of a NACA0012 half-wing at an angle of attack $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}=5^{\circ }$ and a chord-based Reynolds number $Re=1000$ . The stability results show that the unstable mode with the smallest growth rate (fifth wake mode) provides a pathway to excite a vortex instability, whereas the principal unstable mode does not. Inspired by this finding, we perform direct numerical simulations that excite each mode with body forces matching the shape function from the stability analysis. Relative to the uncontrolled case, the controlled flows show increased attenuation of circulation and peak streamwise vorticity, with the fifth-mode-based control set-up outperforming the principal-mode-based set-up. From these results, we conclude that a rudimentary linear stability analysis can provide key insights into the underlying physics and help engineers design effective physics-based flow control strategies.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Sep 19, 2018
Source ID
10.1017/jfm.2018.701

Entities

People

  • Adam Edstrand
  • Kunihiko Taira
  • Louis N Cattafesta
  • Peter J. Schmid
  • Yiyang Sun

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Control Systems Engineering.
  • Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Spacecraft Maneuvers