Effects of notches on the surface pressure field downstream of a wall-mounted spoiler

Notched spoilers have been observed to be more effective than uniform spoilers to suppress the flow-induced cavity resonance of vehicles with open sunroofs. In this study, a few mechanisms possibly involved in buffeting suppression from notched spoilers were investigated experimentally and numerically. One objective was to investigate the spatial coherence and phase of the wall pressure fluctuations downstream of notched spoilers in comparison with the same quantities for uniform spoilers. Another objective was to gather detailed measured data to allow the verification of computer simulations of the flow over the notched spoiler. Experiments were performed to measure the velocity and wall pressure fields downstream of spoilers mounted on the rigid floor of a closed test section wind tunnel. Efforts were made to reproduce the spoiler and wind tunnel geometry and boundary conditions of the experimental setup in the numerical simulations. The numerical investigation used the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM), with the so-called Very Large Eddy Simulation (VLES) viscosity turbulence model. The results of the numerical investigation were in satisfactory agreement with measured data at low frequencies, where buffeting is expected to occur. The results suggested that the notches break down the homogeneity of the leading edge cross-stream vortices predominantly responsible for the cavity excitation. This decreased the cross-stream coherence of the surface pressure field, thereby reducing the magnitude of the net equivalent excitation force acting over the surface downstream.