The structure and control of a turbulent reattaching flow

Abstract

An experimental study was made of the effect of a periodic velocity perturbation on the separation bubble downstream of the sharp-edged blunt face of a circular cylinder aligned coaxially with the free stream. Velocity fluctuations were produced with an acoustic driver located within the cylinder and a small circumferential gap located immediately downstream of the fixed separation line to allow communication with the external flow. The flow could be considerably modified when forced at frequencies lower than the initial Kelvin-Helmholtz frequencies of the free shear layer, and with associated vortex wavelengths comparable to the bubble height. Reattachment length, bubble height, pressure at separation, and average pressure on the face were all reduced. The effects on the large-scale structures were studied using flow photographs obtained by the smoke-wire technique. The forcing increased the entrainment near the leading edge. It was concluded that the final vortex of the shear layer before reattachment is an important element of the flow structure. There are two different instabilities involved: the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability of the free shear layer and the ‘shedding’-type instability of the entire bubble. The former consists of an interaction of the shear layer vorticity with itself, the latter with its images that result because of the presence of a wall. In order to determine the optimum forcing frequency, a method of frequency scaling is proposed which correlates data for a variety of bubbles and supports an analogy with Kármán vortex shedding.