Mitigation of Antisymmetric Mode and Drag with Base Cavities
Abstract Experiments were carried out to examine the impact of base cavities on the base pressure fluctuations and total drag of a cylindrical afterbody for freestream Mach numbers 0.6-1.5. Significant improvement in the base pressure and a substantial reduction in the afterbody drag was noticed in the presence of a base cavity at subsonic Mach numbers. However, on increasing the cavity length beyond a certain value its performance deteriorates. At supersonic Mach numbers their effectiveness drops drastically. Tones in the spectra can be classified into two types depending on the dominant azimuthal mode which is either 0 or 1 and are referred to as symmetric and an antisymmetric mode, respectively. Spectra at subsonic Mach numbers exhibit tones which are related either to mode 0 or 1. However, at supersonic Mach numbers only tones related to mode 0 exist. The base cavity either, effectively suppress the antisymmetric mode or modify it into a symmetric mode resulting in mitigation of the tones related to antisymmetric mode.