The Effectiveness of Actuators Used in Active Flow Controls: Numerical Simulations, Analysis and Experiments

Abstract

Acquiring the ability to effectively modify and control the behavior of fluid flow continues to be a pervasive and important aspiration in many areas of engineering. The present research continues to advance the technology of various schemes that employ the use of wall-mounted actuators for active flow control. Any design in which fluid-flow characteristics are important (aircraft, turbomachinery, ships, etc.) stands to benefit from this new technology of manipulating the flow behavior by time dependent forcing. Research completed to date promises reduced cost, complexity, and weight along with significant improvement in design performance. A summary of this research indicates however, that the details of the disturbance excitation process have still not been completely explored, and hence an understanding of the important parameters in actuator design is currently unavailable to the engineer. Only with this knowledge will it be possible to design devices for specific tasks that are efficient and effective in their performance. Our program of research examines boundary value periodic point source excitations of laminar boundary layers, and considers how some more complex actuators might be modeled numerically. The study is carried out in three parts: i. linear theory, ii. wind tunnel measurements, iii. full Navier-Stokes modeling.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 2002
Accession Number
ADA406701

Entities

People

  • Hermann Fasel
  • Israel J. Wygnanksi
  • Michael Gaster

Organizations

  • University of Arizona

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundaries
  • Boundary Layer
  • Engineering
  • Flow
  • Flow Fields
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Free Stream
  • Hypervelocity Flow
  • Laminar Boundary Layer
  • Layers
  • Measurement
  • Navier Stokes Equations
  • Pressure Gradients
  • Stratified Fluids
  • Two Dimensional
  • Wind Tunnels

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics.
  • Systems Analysis and Design