scholarly journals Experimental observation of the origin and structure of elastoinertial turbulence

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (45) ◽  
pp. e2102350118
Author(s):  
George H. Choueiri ◽  
Jose M. Lopez ◽  
Atul Varshney ◽  
Sarath Sankar ◽  
Björn Hof

Turbulence generally arises in shear flows if velocities and hence, inertial forces are sufficiently large. In striking contrast, viscoelastic fluids can exhibit disordered motion even at vanishing inertia. Intermediate between these cases, a state of chaotic motion, “elastoinertial turbulence” (EIT), has been observed in a narrow Reynolds number interval. We here determine the origin of EIT in experiments and show that characteristic EIT structures can be detected across an unexpectedly wide range of parameters. Close to onset, a pattern of chevron-shaped streaks emerges in qualitative agreement with linear and weakly nonlinear theory. However, in experiments, the dynamics remain weakly chaotic, and the instability can be traced to far lower Reynolds numbers than permitted by theory. For increasing inertia, the flow undergoes a transformation to a wall mode composed of inclined near-wall streaks and shear layers. This mode persists to what is known as the “maximum drag reduction limit,” and overall EIT is found to dominate viscoelastic flows across more than three orders of magnitude in Reynolds number.

2008 ◽  
Vol 599 ◽  
pp. 405-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRICE MEUNIER ◽  
CHRISTOPHE ELOY ◽  
ROMAIN LAGRANGE ◽  
FRANÇOIS NADAL

In this paper, we report experimental and theoretical results on the flow inside a precessing and rotating cylinder. Particle image velocimetry measurements have revealed the instantaneous structure of the flow and confirmed that it is the sum of forced inertial (Kelvin) modes, as predicted by the classical linear inviscid theory. But this theory predicts also that the amplitude of a mode diverges when its natural frequency equals the precession frequency. A viscous and weakly nonlinear theory has therefore been developed at the resonance. This theory has been compared to experimental results and shows a good quantitative agreement. For low Reynolds numbers, the mode amplitude scales as the square root of the Reynolds number owing to the presence of Ekman layers on the cylinder walls. When the Reynolds number is increased, the amplitude saturates at a value which scales as the precession angle to the power one-third for a given resonance. The nonlinear theory also predicts the forcing of a geostrophic (axisymmetric) mode which has been observed and measured in the experiments. These results allow the flow inside a precessing cylinder to be fully characterized in all regimes as long as there is no instability.


Author(s):  
Marion Mack ◽  
Roland Brachmanski ◽  
Reinhard Niehuis

The performance of the low pressure turbine (LPT) can vary appreciably, because this component operates under a wide range of Reynolds numbers. At higher Reynolds numbers, mid and aft loaded profiles have the advantage that transition of suction side boundary layer happens further downstream than at front loaded profiles, resulting in lower profile loss. At lower Reynolds numbers, aft loading of the blade can mean that if a suction side separation exists, it may remain open up to the trailing edge. This is especially the case when blade lift is increased via increased pitch to chord ratio. There is a trend in research towards exploring the effect of coupling boundary layer control with highly loaded turbine blades, in order to maximize performance over the full relevant Reynolds number range. In an earlier work, pulsed blowing with fluidic oscillators was shown to be effective in reducing the extent of the separated flow region and to significantly decrease the profile losses caused by separation over a wide range of Reynolds numbers. These experiments were carried out in the High-Speed Cascade Wind Tunnel of the German Federal Armed Forces University Munich, Germany, which allows to capture the effects of pulsed blowing at engine relevant conditions. The assumed control mechanism was the triggering of boundary layer transition by excitation of the Tollmien-Schlichting waves. The current work aims to gain further insight into the effects of pulsed blowing. It investigates the effect of a highly efficient configuration of pulsed blowing at a frequency of 9.5 kHz on the boundary layer at a Reynolds number of 70000 and exit Mach number of 0.6. The boundary layer profiles were measured at five positions between peak Mach number and the trailing edge with hot wire anemometry and pneumatic probes. Experiments were conducted with and without actuation under steady as well as periodically unsteady inflow conditions. The results show the development of the boundary layer and its interaction with incoming wakes. It is shown that pulsed blowing accelerates transition over the separation bubble and drastically reduces the boundary layer thickness.


Author(s):  
Carlos Marchi ◽  
Cosmo D. Santiago ◽  
Carlos Alberto Rezende de Carvalho Junior

Abstract The incompressible steady-state fluid flow inside a lid-driven square cavity was simulated using the mass conservation and Navier-Stokes equations. This system of equations is solved for Reynolds numbers of up to 10,000 to the accuracy of the computational machine round-off error. The computational model used was the second-order accurate finite volume method. A stable solution is obtained using the iterative multigrid methodology with 8192 × 8192 volumes, while degree-10 interpolation and Richardson extrapolation were used to reduce the discretization error. The solution vector comprised five entries of velocities, pressure, and location. For comparison purposes, 65 different variables of interest were chosen, such as velocity profile, its extremum values and location, extremum values and location of the stream function. The discretization error for each variable of interest was estimated using two types of estimators and their apparent order of accuracy. The variations of the 11 selected variables are shown across 38 Reynolds number values between 0.0001 and 10,000. In this study, we provide a more accurate determination of the Reynolds number value at which the upper secondary vortex appears. The results of this study were compared with those of several other studies in the literature. The current solution methodology was observed to produce the most accurate solution till date for a wide range of Reynolds numbers.


2011 ◽  
Vol 666 ◽  
pp. 104-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROMAIN LAGRANGE ◽  
PATRICE MEUNIER ◽  
FRANÇOIS NADAL ◽  
CHRISTOPHE ELOY

In this paper, the instability of a fluid inside a precessing cylinder is addressed theoretically and experimentally. The precessional motion forces Kelvin modes in the cylinder, which can become resonant for given precessional frequencies and cylinder aspect ratios. When the Reynolds number is large enough, these forced resonant Kelvin modes eventually become unstable. A linear stability analysis based on a triadic resonance between a forced Kelvin mode and two additional free Kelvin modes is carried out. This analysis allows us to predict the spatial structure of the instability and its threshold. These predictions are compared to the vorticity field measured by particle image velocimetry with an excellent agreement. When the Reynolds number is further increased, nonlinear effects appear. A weakly nonlinear theory is developed semi-empirically by introducing a geostrophic mode, which is triggered by the nonlinear interaction of a free Kelvin mode with itself in the presence of viscosity. Amplitude equations are obtained coupling the forced Kelvin mode, the two free Kelvin modes and the geostrophic mode. They show that the instability saturates to a fixed point just above threshold. Increasing the Reynolds number leads to a transition from a steady saturated regime to an intermittent flow in good agreement with experiments. Surprisingly, this weakly nonlinear model still gives a correct estimate of the mean flow inside the cylinder even far from the threshold when the flow is turbulent.


2009 ◽  
Vol 624 ◽  
pp. 389-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
FAZLUL R. ZUBAIR ◽  
HARIS J. CATRAKIS

This work explores fractal geometrical properties of scalar turbulent interfaces derived from experimental two-dimensional spatial images of the scalar field in separated shear layers at large Reynolds numbers. The resolution of the data captures the upper three decades of scales enabling examination of multiscale geometrical properties ranging from the largest energy-containing scales to inertial scales. The data show a −5/3 spectral exponent over a wide range of scales corresponding to the inertial range in fully developed turbulent flows. For the fractal aspects, we utilize two methods as it is known that different methods may lead to different fractal aspects. We use the recently developed method for fractal analysis known as the Multiscale-Minima Meshless (M3) method because it does not require the use of grids. We also use the conventional box-counting approach as it has been frequently employed in various past studies. The outer scalar interfaces are identified on the basis of the probability density function (p.d.f.) of the scalar field. For the outer interfaces, the M3 method shows strong scale dependence of the generalized fractal dimension with approximately linear variation of the dimension as a function of logarithmic scale, for interface-fitting reference areas, but there is evidence of a plateau near a dimension D ~ 1.3 for larger reference areas. The conventional box-counting approach shows evidence of a plateau with a constant dimension also of D ~ 1.3, for the same reference areas. In both methods, the observed plateau dimension value agrees with other studies in different flow geometries. Scalar threshold effects are also examined and show that the internal scalar interfaces exhibit qualitatively similar behaviour to the outer interfaces. The overall range of box-counting fractal dimension values exhibited by outer and internal interfaces is D ~ 1.2–1.4. The present findings show that the fractal aspects of scalar interfaces in separated shear layers at large Reynolds number with −5/3 spectral behaviour can depend on the method used for evaluating the dimension and on the reference area. These findings as well as the utilities and distinctions of these two different definitions of the dimension are discussed in the context of multiscale modelling of mixing and the interfacial geometry.


1975 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmond Szechenyi

In wind-tunnel tests on bluff bodies the Reynolds number is often limited to values that are very much smaller than those of the flows being simulated. In such cases the experiments may have no practical significance whatsoever since both the fluctuating and the steady aerodynamic phenomena can vary considerably with Reynolds number.This difficulty was encountered in an investigation of supercritical incompressible flow over cylinders, and an attempt at artificially increasing the Reynolds number by means of surface roughness was made. In order to evaluate this simulation technique, the influence of various grades of surface roughness on the aerodynamic forces acting on cylinders of different diameters was studied over a wide range of Reynolds numbers in two very different wind tunnels. The results allow very positive conclusions to be drawn.


1966 ◽  
Vol 88 (1) ◽  
pp. 221-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Schlichting ◽  
A. Das

A survey is given of extensive research work on cascade-flow problems carried out in recent years in Germany. A considerable part of this work was done in the Variable Density High Speed Cascade Wind Tunnel of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fu¨r Luftfahrt at Braunschweig, in which the Reynolds number and the Mach number of the cascade can be varied independently. For compressor cascades with blades of different thickness ratio extensive measurements of the aerodynamic coefficients have been carried out in a wide range of Mach numbers and Reynolds numbers. For very low Reynolds numbers, as they occur for jet engines in high-altitude flight, the influence of turbulence level on loss coefficients has been investigated. Furthermore, comprehensive investigations on secondary-flow losses are reported. The most important parameters in this connection are the ratio of blade length to blade chord, the tip clearance, the Reynolds number, and the deflection of the flow in the cascade. The influence of all these parameters on the secondary-flow losses has been clarified to a certain extent.


Author(s):  
N.I. Kochurova ◽  
Ye.S. Parkhaev ◽  
N.V. Semenchikov

The paper considers the solutions to the multicriteria problem of optimizing the wing airfoil of a miniature unmanned aerial vehicle (MUAV) under various constraints. The study introduces the statement of the problem of multicriteria optimization of the airfoil shape, following the condition of MUAV horizontal flight, with an additional condition associated with a change in the flight Reynolds number of the MUAV wing. This statement of the problem allows us to optimize the airfoil, taking into account the load on the wing of the designed vehicle. The wing airfoil was optimized in a wide range of lift coefficients of Cya and Reynolds numbers. The study shows that taking into account the Reynolds number makes it possible to improve the quality of the result obtained during optimization, and introduces a technique for multicriteria optimization of the wing airfoil with sealed mechanization, i.e. with flaperon. Findings of research show that for equal values of the relative thickness, the mechanized airfoil obtained as a result of optimization has a lower center line camber (by 1.5%) than the optimized airfoil without mechanization, due to which a gain in the drag coefficient is achieved at close to zero values of the lift coefficient. The study shows how profitable the use of a wing airfoil with a flaperon on MUAV wings can be, in contrast to an airfoil without mechanization.


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