Feedback control of three-dimensional bluff body wakes for efficient drag reduction

The wakes of bluff bodies, such as automotive vehicles, exhibit complex behaviour due to three-dimensionality and high Reynolds numbers, and are furthermore responsible for significant aerodynamic drag. There are significant environmental and economic incentives for reducing drag, however practicalities limit the extent to which this can be achieved through changes to the vehicle shape. This motivates the use of active feedback control methods that modify the flow directly, without significant geometric changes. In this thesis we develop feedback control strategies for two generic three-dimensional bluff bodies, a bullet-shaped body and the widely used Ahmed body. After first applying an extremum-seeking controller to a pre-existing open-loop strategy, we then examine the control of specific coherent structures within the wakes. Two such structures understood to be related to the drag are the static symmetry breaking (SB) mode and the quasi-oscillatory vortex shedding. The former of these is observed as a large-scale asymmetry within the recirculating region. We find, through simultaneous surface pressure and wake velocity measurements, that both the SB mode and vortex shedding may be observed in real-time using practical pressure sensors. Through the use of forcing flaps, we further demonstrate that we are able to strongly interact with both these coherent structures. Statically deflected flaps also prove effective at drag reduction under cross-wind conditions. In order to guide feedback controller design, we develop stochastic models for each of the coherent structures, describing their dynamics and response to forcing. Controllers are then implemented, achieving an efficient drag reduction of 2% when suppressing the asymmetry of the SB mode. Vortex shedding control proved ineffective at drag reduction, despite the suppression of measured fluctuations around the frequency at which oscillations are observed.Open Acces

The route to transcription initiation determines the mode of transcriptional bursting in E. coli

Transcription is fundamentally noisy, leading to significant heterogeneity across bacterial populations. Noise is often attributed to burstiness, but the underlying mechanisms and their dependence on the mode of promotor regulation remain unclear. Here, we measure E. coli single cell mRNA levels for two stress responses that depend on bacterial sigma factors with different mode of transcription initiation (sigma (70) and sigma (54)). By fitting a stochastic model to the observed mRNA distributions, we show that the transition from low to high expression of the sigma (70)-controlled stress response is regulated via the burst size, while that of the sigma (54)-controlled stress response is regulated via the burst frequency. Therefore, transcription initiation involving sigma (54) differs from other bacterial systems, and yields bursting kinetics characteristic of eukaryotic systems. Transcription noise in bacteria is often attributed to burstiness, but the mechanisms are unclear. Here, the authors show that the transition from low to high expression can be regulated via burst size or burst frequency, depending on the mode of transcription initiation determined by different sigma factors

Supplementary data for paper: Extremum seeking to control the amplitude and frequency of a pulsed jet for bluff body drag reduction

<p>Data accompanying the Experiments in Fluids paper entitled: Extremum seeking to control the amplitude and frequency of a pulsed jet for bluff body drag reduction. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00348-016-2243-4.</p> <p>Zipped files contain the folders of data, while the .mat files contain Matlab scripts to generate the plots in the paper.</p