Particle image velocimetry and laser Doppler anemometry experimental studies of a compressible short take-off and vertical landing ground vortex flow

Abstract

A particle image velocimetry (PIV) and laser Doppler anemometry (LDA) study of a scaled short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) ground vortex flow is presented. The scaled flow features a compressible impinging jet in cross-flow with a moving ground plane. Mean and transient PIV and LDA velocity data are recorded from the ground vortex about the jet centre-line over a range of nozzle pressure ratios (NPR s) from 2.3 to 3.7, nozzle height—diameter ratios ( h/dn) from 3 to 10 (where dn = 12.7 mm) and cross-flow velocities (V∞) from 10 to 20 m/s, corresponding to effective velocity ratios of 19 < Ve−1 < 38. For each condition, 72 PIV vector maps were taken from the ground vortex region to generate an instantaneous and time-average data set. From the instantaneous data, a cinematic sequence was used to track the ground vortex position, which was found to fluctuate longitudinally by a root mean square distance of up to 4.47 dn and vertically by up to 2.18 dn. From the time-averaged PIV measurements, selected LDA pointwise data were taken at the average ground vortex core. Subsequent spectral analysis of the PIV time series showed the ground vortex position to fluctuate at dominant frequencies of between 2.5 and 5 Hz while the LDA data showed the velocity to fluctuate by dominant frequencies ranging between 1 and 30 Hz.