Investigation of coherent structures generated by acoustic tube in turbulent flow separation control

Abstract

An acoustic tube was designed in order to control the turbulent flow separation downstream of a backward-facing step. The Reynolds number based on the free-stream velocity and the step height was Reh = 2.0 × 104. As an active flow control device, the acoustic tube generated periodic pressure perturbations at a frequency of fa = 100 Hz, which was close to the most amplified frequency of the shedding instability of the turbulent shear layer. Spanwise vortices rolled up due to the perturbations. 2D–2C particle image velocimetry was used to measure separated shear layer and the reattachment area downstream of the BFS. The flow control results show that the acoustic tube can suppress recirculation regions behind the step and reduce the reattachment length by 43.7 %. The roll-up and pairing processes of the vortices lead to an increase in the total Reynolds shear stress. The coherent structures are extracted by proper orthogonal decomposition and represented by two pairs of modes, of which the coherence is analyzed by the corresponding coefficients. Both the primary and secondary series of vortices are reconstructed as traveling waves with the fundamental frequency fa and the overtone frequency 2fa, respectively.