On the wave-cancelling nature of boundary layer flow control

This work deals with the feedforward active control of Tollmien–Schlichting instability waves over incompressible 2D and 3D boundary layers. Through an extensive numerical study, two strategies are evaluated; the optimal linear–quadratic–Gaussian (LQG) controller, designed using the Eigensystem realization algorithm, is compared to a wave-cancellation scheme, which is obtained using the direct inversion of frequency-domain transfer functions of the system. For the evaluated cases, it is shown that LQG leads to a similar control law and presents a comparable performance to the simpler, wave-cancellation scheme, indicating that the former acts via a destructive interference of the incoming wavepacket downstream of actuation. The results allow further insight into the physics behind flow control of convectively unstable flows permitting, for instance, the optimization of the transverse position for actuation. Using concepts of linear stability theory and the derived transfer function, a more efficient actuation for flow control is chosen, leading to similar attenuation of Tollmien–Schlichting waves with only about 10% of the actuation power in the baseline case.