Stochastic dynamics and model reduction of amplifier flows: the backward facing step flow

Abstract

AbstractMethods for investigating and approximating the linear dynamics of amplifier flows are examined in this paper. The procedures are derived for incompressible flow over a two-dimensional backward-facing step. First, the singular value decomposition of the resolvent is performed over a frequency range in order to identify the optimal and suboptimal harmonic forcing and responses of the flow. These forcing/responses are shown to be organized into two categories: the first accounting for the Orr and Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities in the shear layer and the second for the advection and diffusion of perturbations in the free stream. Next, we investigate the dynamics of the flow when excited by a white in space and time noise. We compute the predominant patterns of the random flow which optimally account for the sustained variance, the empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs), as well as the predominant forcing structures which optimally contribute to the sustained variance, the stochastic optimals (SOs). The leading EOFs and SOs are expressed as a linear combination of the suboptimal forcing and responses of the flow and are related to particular instability mechanisms and/or frequency intervals. Finally, we use the leading EOFs, SOs and balanced modes (obtained from balanced truncation) to build low-order models of the flow dynamics. These models are shown to accurately recover the time propagator and resolvent of the original dynamical system. In other words, such models capture the entire flow response from any forcing and may be used in the design of efficient closed-loop controllers for amplifier flows.