Transient Performance of Separated Flows: Characterization and Active Flow Control

Abstract

The aerothermal performance of the low pressure turbine in UAVs’ is significantly abated at high altitude, due to boundary layer separation. During past years different flow control strategies have been proposed to prevent boundary layer separation, such as dielectric barrier discharges, synthetic jets, vortex generators. However, the optimization of the control approach requires a better characterization of the separated regions at several frequencies. The present investigation analyzes the behavior of separated flows, and specifically reports the inception, reattachment and separation length, that allows the development of more efficient methods to manipulate flow separation under non-tempo-rally uniform inlet conditions. The development of separated flows under sudden flow accelerations or pulsating inlet conditions were investigated with series of numerical simulations including Unsteady Reynolds Average Navier Stokes and Large Eddy Simulations. The present research was performed on a wall mounted hump, which imposes an adverse pressure gradient representative of the suction side of low pressure turbines. The heat transfer and wall shear stresses were fully documented, as well as the flow velocity and temperature profiles at different axial locations to characterize the near wall flow properties and the thermal boundary layer. Through a sudden flow acceleration we looked into the dynamic response of the shear layer detachment as it is modulated by the mean flow evolution. Similarly, we studied the behavior of the recirculation bubble under periodic disturbances imposed by sinusoidal inlet total pressure signals at various frequencies ranging from 10 to 500 Hz. During each period the Reynolds number oscillates between 40000 and 180000 (based on a characteristic length of 0.1 m). Finally, as a first step into the flow control approach we added a slot in our geometry to allow flow injection and ingestion just upstream of the separation inception. Exploring the behavior of the separated region at different slot pressure conditions we defined the envelope for its periodic actuation. Thanks to that analysis, we found that matching the actuator frequency with the frequency response of the separated region the performance of the actuation is boosted.