Abstract
In hypersonic boundary layer flows the nonlinear disturbance evolution occurs relatively slowly over a very long length scale and has a profound effect on boundary layer transition. In the case of low-level freestream disturbances and negligible surface roughness, the transition is due to the modal growth of exponentially growing Mack modes that are destabilized by wall cooling. Cross-bicoherence measurements, derived from hot-wire data acquired in a quiet hypersonic tunnel, are used to identify and quantify phase-locked, quadratic sum and difference interactions involving the Mack modes. In the early stages of the nonlinear disturbance evolution, cross-bicoherence measurements indicate that the energy exchange between the Mack mode and the mean flow first occurs to broaden the sidebands; this is immediately followed by a sum interaction of the Mack mode to generate the first harmonic. In the next stages of the nonlinear disturbance evolution, there is a difference interaction of the first harmonic, which is also thought to contribute to the mean flow distortion. This difference interaction, in the latter stages, is also accompanied by a difference interaction between Mack mode and first harmonic, and a sum interaction, which forces the second harmonic. Analysis using the digital complex demodulation technique, shows that the low-frequency, phase-locked interaction that is identified in the cross bicoherence when the Mack mode and first harmonic have large amplitudes, arises due to the amplitude modulation of Mack mode and first harmonic.
Published Version
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