Recent studies on flame stabilization of premixed turbulent gases

FLAME stabilization is of importance in the practical design of ramjets and afterburners. It has been studied extensively in recent years, particularly with reference to bluff-body flame-holders. In the present survey we describe the investigations relating to flame holding by bluff bodies as well as new techniques (e.g.,. flame holding by the use of reverse jets) which may prove to be of practical importance in new engine configurations. In Section II we consider the flow field downstream of a bluff-body flame-holder which includes the recirculation zone behind the body and a region of flame spreading farther downstream. Explicit reference is made to crucial experiments which illustrate the nature and magnitude of the velocity field, the physical extent, the temperature, and the gas composition of the recirculation zone. Experimental studies and theoretical predictions of the angle of flame spreading, as well as some observations on unstable flow and the onset of blowoff, will be reviewed. The variation of blowoff velocity with flame-holder design, pressure, and mixture composition is considered briefly in Section III both for single and for adjacent bluff bodies. Also included is a summary of results for blowoff velocities obtained with a reverse-jet flame-holder and with wall recesses. Theoretical studies on the mechanism of flame stabilization form the subject of Section IV. We shall indicate the points on which various proposed models agree and disagree with experiment and attempt to formulate a composite description which is consistent with most of the currently available experimental data both for bluff-body and for reverse-jet flameholders

Vortical structure in the wake of a transverse jet

Structural features resulting from the interaction of a turbulent jet issuing transversely into a uniform stream are described with the help of flow visualization and hot-wire anemometry. Jet-to-crossflow velocity ratios from 2 to 10 were investigated at crossflow Reynolds numbers from 3800 to 11400. In particular, the origin and formation of the vortices in the wake are described and shown to be fundamentally different from the well-known phenomenon of vortex shedding from solid bluff bodies. The flow around a transverse jet does not separate from the jet and does not shed vorticity into the wake. Instead, the wake vortices have their origins in the laminar boundary layer of the wall from which the jet issues. It is argued that the closed flow around the jet imposes an adverse pressure gradient on the wall, on the downstream lateral sides of the jet, provoking 'separation events’ in the wall boundary layer on each side. These result in eruptions of boundary-layer fluid and formation of wake vortices that are convected downstream. The measured wake Strouhal frequencies, which depend on the jet-crossflow velocity ratio, match the measured frequencies of the separation events. The wake structure is most orderly and the corresponding wake Strouhal number (0.13) is most sharply defined for velocity ratios near the value 4. Measured wake profiles show deficits of both momentum and total pressure

A study of the wake structure behind bluff rings

The structure of the wakes of the ring models with various cross-sections has been studied. They are compared with the wakes of a solid circular disk and two flat plates arranged side-by-side. Measurements were carried out in the wind tunnel at Reynolds numbers of the order of 10^. Periodic components were extracted from the turbulent velocity fluctuations measured by hot-wires in the wake by employing a conditional averaging technique. Also, surface pressure distributions together with correlation and coherence of the velocity fluctuations in the wake were measured. The wake structure of the ring model was found to be highly dependent on the geometry of model. A regular and coherent axisymmetric vortex ring shedding alternately from the inside and outside of ring models with d/w _> 5.0 was observed, where d is the mean diameter and w is the width of the ring model. There exists a sudden change of the correlation curves for the ring model between d/w = 4.5 and d/w = 5.0 and the base pressure coefficient rapidly decreases with increasing d/w between d/w = 4.0 and d/w = 6.0. Velocity fluctuations in the wake of the ring model with d/w £ 4.0 have a fairly weak predominate frequency and the velocity fluctuation components at the peak frequency are about 180° out of phase about the axis of symmetry. The counterrotating inside and outside vortex rings shed from the thin sharp-edged cross-section ring model with d/w = 6.0 are nearly 180° out of phase with each other at 3.4 w downstream from the ring model. However at further distances downstream they get closer to each other because of the opposite signed self-induced velocities of both sets of vortex rings. A remarkable regular periodic velocity fluctuation was recognised on the axis of symmetry in the wake of a rectangular cross-section ring model. It was also observed that vortex shedding from two flat plates arranged side-by-side with fairly wide spacing is symmetric about the axis of the gap and the arrangement of vortices is almost constant along the wake. The vortex wakes of a ring and two flat plates were numerically modelled by using infinite rows of circular line vortices and two-dimensional point vortices respectively. The arrangements of vortices and their variation with downstream distance observed in the wind tunnel experiment were well predicted in spite of the simple numerical simulations used. The streaklines and particle paths in the wakes of ring models and two flat plates were visualized in a water tank at Reynolds numbers just below 10^. The results from flow visualization agree with the results of the wind tunnel experiments

Characterisation of a horizontal axis wind turbine’s tip and root vortices

The vortical near wake of a model horizontal axis wind turbine has been investigated experimentally in a water channel. The objective of this work is to study vortex interaction and stability of the helical vortex filaments within a horizontal axis wind turbine wake. The experimental model is a geometrically scaled version of the Tjæreborg wind turbine, which existed in western Denmark in the late 1980s. Here, the turbine was tested in both the upwind and downwind configurations. Qualitative flow visualisations using hydrogen bubble, particle streakline and planar laser-induced fluorescence techniques were combined with quantitative data measurements taken using planar particle image velocimetry. Vortices were identified using velocity gradient tensor invariants. Parameters that describe the helical vortex wake, such as the helicoidal pitch, and vortex circulation, were determined for three tip speed ratios. Particular attention is given here to the root vortex, which has been investigated minimally to date. Signatures of the coherent tip vortices are seen throughout the measurement domain; however, the signature of the root vortex is only evident much closer to the rotor plane, irrespective of the turbine configuration. It is postulated that the root vortex diffuses rapidly due to the effects of the turbine support geometries

Some remarks on the design of transonic tunnels with low levels of flow unsteadiness

The principal sources of flow unsteadiness in the circuit of a transonic wind tunnel are presented. Care must be taken to avoid flow separations, acoustic resonances and large scale turbulence. Some problems discussed are the elimination of diffuser separations, the aerodynamic design of coolers and the unsteadiness generated in ventilated working sections

First Instability and Structural Sensitivity of the Flow Past Two Side-by-Side Cylinders

The onset of two-dimensional instabilities in the flow past two side-by-side circular cylinders is numerically investigated in the ranges 0.1 <= 6 <= 3 and Re < 100, with g being the non-dimensional gap spacing between the surfaces of the two cylinders and Re the Reynolds number. A comprehensive, global stability analysis of the symmetric base flow is carried out, indicating that three harmonic modes and one steady antisymmetric mode become unstable at different values of g and Re. These modes are known to promote distinct flow regimes at increasing values of g: single bluff-body, asymmetric, in-phase and antiphase synchronized vortex shedding. For each mode, the inherent structural sensitivity is examined in order to identify the core region of the related instability mechanism. In addition, by exploiting the structural sensitivity analysis to base flow modifications, a passive control strategy is proposed for the simultaneous suppression of the two synchronized shedding modes using two small secondary cylinders. Its effectiveness is then validated a posteriori by means of direct numerical simulations

Unsteady Cylinder Wakes from Arbitrary Bodies with Differentiable Physics-Assisted Neural Network

This work delineates a hybrid predictive framework configured as a coarse-grained surrogate for reconstructing unsteady fluid flows around multiple cylinders of diverse configurations. The presence of cylinders of arbitrary nature causes abrupt changes in the local flow profile while globally exhibiting a wide spectrum of dynamical wakes fluctuating in either a periodic or chaotic manner. Consequently, the focal point of the present study is to establish predictive frameworks that accurately reconstruct the overall fluid velocity flowfield such that the local boundary layer profile, as well as the wake dynamics, are both preserved for long time horizons. The hybrid framework is realized using a base differentiable flow solver combined with a neural network, yielding a differentiable physics-assisted neural network (DPNN). The framework is trained using bodies with arbitrary shapes, and then it is tested and further assessed on out-of-distribution samples. Our results indicate that the neural network acts as a forcing function to correct the local boundary layer profile while also remarkably improving the dissipative nature of the flowfields. It is found that the DPNN framework clearly outperforms the supervised learning approach while respecting the reduced feature space dynamics. The model predictions for arbitrary bodies indicate that the Strouhal number distribution with respect to spacing ratio exhibits similar patterns with existing literature. In addition, our model predictions also enable us to discover similar wake categories for flow past arbitrary bodies. For the chaotic wakes, the present approach predicts the chaotic switch in gap flows up to the mid-time range.Comment: codes to follow shortly: https://github.com/tum-pbs/DiffPhys-CylinderWakeFlow

Wake-induced `slaloming' response explains exquisite sensitivity of seal whisker-like sensors

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2015. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Cambridge University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics 783 (2015): 306-322, doi:10.1017/jfm.2015.513.Blindfolded harbour seals are able to use their uniquely shaped whiskers to track vortex wakes left by moving animals and identify objects that passed by 30 s earlier, an impressive feat, as the flow features have velocities as low as 1 mm s−1. The seals sense while swimming, hence their whiskers are sensitive enough to detect small-scale changes in the flow, while rejecting self-generated flow noise. Here we identify and illustrate a novel flow mechanism, causing a large-amplitude ‘slaloming’ whisker response, which allows artificial whiskers with the identical unique undulatory geometry as those of the harbour seal to detect the features of minute flow fluctuations when placed within wakes. Whereas in open water the whisker responds with very low-amplitude vibration, once within a wake, it oscillates with large amplitude and, importantly, its response frequency coincides with the Strouhal frequency of the upstream cylinder, making the detection of an upstream wake and an estimation of the size and shape of the wake-generating body possible. This mechanism has some similarities with the flow mechanisms observed in actively controlled propulsive foils within upstream wakes and trout swimming behind bluff cylinders in a stream, but there are also differences caused by the unique whisker morphology, which enables it to respond passively and within a much wider parametric range.The authors acknowledge with gratitude support by ONR, monitored by Dr. Thomas Swean, Jr. under grant N00014-13-1-0059, the William I. Koch Chair in Marine Technology, the MIT Sea Grant Program, and the Singapore National Research Foundation through the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology: Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling (CENSAM).2016-04-1

Experimental Study of Isothermal Wake-Flow Characteristics of Various Flame-Holder Shapes

An investigation of the isothermal wake-flow characteristics of several flame-holder shapes was carried out in a 4- by 4-inch flow chamber. The effects of flame-holder-shape changes on the characteristics of the Karman vortices and thus on the recirculation zones to which experimenters have related the combustion process were obtained for several flame holders. The results may furnish a basis of correlation, of combustion efficiency and stability for similarly shaped flame holders in combustion studies. Values of the spacing ratio-(ratio of lateral spacing to longitudinal spacing of vortices] obtained for the various shapes approximated the theoretical value of 0.36 given by the Karman stability analysis. Variations in vortex strength of more than 200 percent and in frequency of more than 60 percent were accomplished by varying flame-holder shape. A maximum increase in the recirculation parameter of 56 percent over that for a conventional V-gutter was also obtained. Varying flameholder shape and size enables the designer to select many schedules of variations in vortex strength and frequency- not obtainable by changing size only and may make it possible to approach theoretical maximum vortex strength for any given frequency