Search

This study is focused on the characterization and modeling of aviation fuel cavitation physics in radial flow in a thin layer between two disks—a geometry highly relevant to aviation fuel pump systems. This involves a lower circular disk with a centrally located fuel injection port and a matching disk resting on top of the lower disk. In the described experiments, we have quantified and compared cavitating disk behavior for distilled water and JP-5 fuel at various inlet supply pressures via high-speed imaging and radial pressure measurements. High-speed imaging data were used to quantify the radial collapse location of cavitation voids. An enhanced gradient shadowgraphy method was employed to obtain the spatial–temporal evolution of propagating bubbly shock waves. This technique revealed unsteady shock waves propagating in a spiral motion in JP-5 fuel, while a standing bubbly shock was observed in water. In our modeling efforts, the Rayleigh–Plesset equation was adapted to a spatial form in order to predict the radial location of cavitation bubble collapse. Further work incorporated the spatial Rayleigh–Plesset equation into the barotropic model that has been used previously for cavitating nozzle flows and generalized it to radial flow geometry in order to reproduce radial pressure profiles obtained from the experiment. The model predictions of the radial location of bubble collapse and the radial pressure profiles are shown to be in excellent agreement with the experiments. This approach will be valuable for predicting aviation fuel cavitation in complex fuel system geometries.

This paper develops a spatial input-output approach to investigate the dynamics of a turbulent boundary layer subject to a localized single frequency excitation. This method uses one-way spatial integration to reformulate the problem in terms of spatial evolution equations. The technique is used to examine the effect of localized periodic actuation at a given temporal frequency, based on an experimental set-up in which an active large-scale is introduced into the outer layer of a turbulent boundary layer. First, the large-scale structures associated with the phase-locked modal velocity field obtained from spatial input-output analysis are shown to closely match those computed based on hot-wire measurements. The approach is then used to further investigate the response of the boundary layer to the synthetically generated large-scale. A quadrant trajectory analysis indicates that the spatial input-output response produces shear stress distributions consistent with those in canonical wall-bounded turbulent flows in terms of both the order and types of events observed. The expected correspondence between the dominance of different quadrant behavior and actuation frequency is also observed. These results highlight the promise of a spatial input-output framework for analyzing the formation and streamwise evolution of structures in actuated wall-bounded turbulent flows., 34 pages, 12 figures, preliminary work presented in AIAA Aviation 2021 with paper no. 2021-2873

The chordwise, unsteady pressure difference field for harmonically oscillating airfoils operating in the attached flow, light dynamic stall, and deep dynamic stall regimes has been modally decompos...

Experiments were performed using an active flow control approach that has shown the ability to significantly reduce the viscous drag in turbulent boundary layers. The purpose of this work was to document the changes in the turbulence characteristics of the boundary layer with the drag reduction. The flow control involved generating a steady spanwise velocity component of the order of vortical structures, indicate a suppression of coherent features in the wall layer. These results are consistent with an underlying mechanism for drag reduction that comes from a suppression of the turbulence producing events in the wall layer associated with the wall streak structure.

The Barotropic Cavitation Model describes the behavior of a homogeneous mixture of liquid and gas bubbles (gaseous cavitation) as it traverses a converging-diverging (CD) nozzle. Its normal shock formulation makes reliable and accurate predictions of streamwise static pressure distribution from the nozzle inlet to just downstream of the throat and in the diverging section as the flow approaches the nozzle outlet. It fails in the intermediate portion of the divergence with maximum pressure prediction errors (as a fraction of nozzle inlet pressure) roughly equivalent to the back pressure ratio (as high as 0.46). A correction to the streamwise static pressure distributions predicted by the normal shock solution of the Barotropic Cavitation Model is proposed, applied and compared to experiments with aerated and non-aerated cavitation in several fluids. When used to simulate aerated cavitation of dodecane in a CD nozzle it predicts the location of first disagreement between the normal shock solution and experimental static pressure measurements within 4% of nozzle length. A polynomial curve fit between this predicted point (xcorr) and the normal shock location (xshock) then reduces maximum prediction error for static pressure in the correction region to no more than 0.11 (as a fraction of inlet pressure) for the aerated dodecane cases examined. For non-aerated gaseous cavitation in dodecane, water or JP8 jet fuel this error ratio does not exceed 0.13 and typical values are less than 0.07.