Abstract
In the present investigation, a wind tunnel experiment was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the trailing edge jets control scheme to mitigate the unsteady aerodynamic force and flow structure of a single box girder (SBG) model. The flow control scheme uses four isolated circular holes for forming the jet flow to modify the periodic vortex shedding behind the SBG model and then alleviate the fluctuation of the aerodynamic force acting on the test model. The Reynolds number is calculated as 2.08 × 104 based on the incoming velocity and the height of the test model. A digital pressure measurement system was utilized to obtain and record the surface pressure that was distributed around the SBG model. The surface pressure results show that the fluctuating amplitude of the aerodynamic forces was attenuated in the controlled case at a specific range of the non-dimensional jet momentum coefficient. The Strouhal number of the controlled case also deviates from that of the original SBG model. Except for the pressure measurement experiment, a high-resolution digital particle image velocimetry system was applied to investigate the detailed flow structure behind the SBG model to uncover the unsteady vortex motion process from the SBG model with and without the trailing edge jets flow control. As the jet flow blows into the wake, the alternating vortex shedding mode is switched into a symmetrical shedding mode and the width of the wake flow is narrowed. The proper orthogonal decomposition was used to identify the energy of the different modes and obtain its corresponding flow structures. Moreover, the linear stability analysis of the flow field behind the SBG model shows that the scheme of trailing edge jets can dramatically suppress the area of unsteady flow.
Highlights
With the span of bridges increasing, the main girder of the bridge will become more flexible with lower stiffness and damping to resist the dynamic load
Besides the surface pressure measurement results, the PIV measurement experimental result can assist us in understanding the control mechanism of the trailing edge jets set in the single box girder (SBG) model
Turbulence kinetic energy (TKE), which serves as a criterion to estimate the unsteady surface pressure and the fluctuating aerodynamic force that is acting on the SBG model [31,32,33], is calculated as follows: TKE
Summary
With the span of bridges increasing, the main girder of the bridge will become more flexible with lower stiffness and damping to resist the dynamic load. The technique of leading-edge and trailing edge holes and the communicating channel formed the self-suction-and-jet (SSJ) flow as designed by Chen et al [18] These experimental results showed a reduction of the unsteady surface pressure and aerodynamic force, and the near-wake flow structure was steadier. Inspired by the investigation result of Chen et al [20], we only set the jet holes in the trailing edge of a single box girder (SBG) model to control the unsteady surface pressure, aerodynamic force, and unsteady flow structure. The present study is to investigate the control ability of the trailing edge jet for alleviating the unsteady aerodynamic force and the flow field of a single box girder and study what can influence the local separation on the upper and lower surface near to the leading edge of the SBG model.
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