Separation induced low-frequency unsteadiness in a supersonic combustor with single-side expansion

Abstract

Systematic studies on separation induced low-frequency unsteadiness in a canonical supersonic combustor are implemented through wind tunnel experiment and numerical simulation. With an inflow Mach number of 3, cold flow analysis has been carried out to focus on the key impact factor of flow instability. Dynamic flow features are captured by high-frequency pressure signals, and three-dimensional Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes simulation is performed to represent the typical unsteady movement of the shock train. The separated flowfield shows an intrinsic instability, whose feature is the large-amplitude and low-frequency streamwise movement of the oblique shock train. The oscillation of shock train is in a broadband frequency range, and pressure signals obtained from different streamwise regions behave various features. The intermittent region and the backpressure-affected region are two major resources of oscillation energy. Numerical results represent variable-speed shock train motions with multiple amplitudes, and broadband behaviors in experiments are captured. The autocorrelation analysis shows that the broadband behavior of the unsteadiness is not caused by the white noise. From the coherence analysis, it is found that two kinds of oscillation modes (independent and synchronous) exist in the flowfield. The independent mode exists extensively in the unstable flow, while the synchronous mode only appears occasionally and is always suppressed in the very-low-frequency band (below 80 Hz). Repeated experiments indicate that signals from these two oscillation modes superpose randomly. The phase analysis reveals that the backpressure is the original source of this complicated unstable separated flow.