Generic Transport Aft-body Drag Reduction using Active Flow Control

Active flow-separation control is an effective and efficient mean for drag reduction and unsteady load alleviation resulting from locally or massively separated flow. Such a situation occurs in configurations where the aerodynamic performance is of secondary importance to functionality. The performance of heavy transport helicopters and aeroplanes, having a large, and almost flat, aft loading ramp suffer from the poor aerodynamics of the aft body. Hence, a combined experimental and numerical investigation was undertaken on a generic transport aeroplane/helicopter configuration. The experimental study provided surface pressures, direct drag measurements, surface and smoke flow visualization. The baseline flow was numerically analyzed, using finite volume solutions of the RANS equations. The baseline flow around the model was insensitive to the Reynolds number in the range it was tested. The flow separating from the aft body was characterized by two main sources of drag and unsteadiness. The first is a separation bubble residing at the lower ramp corner and the second is a pair of vortex systems developing and separating from the sides of the ramp. As the model incidence is decreased, the pair of vortex systems also penetrates deeper towards the centerline of the ramp, decreasing the pressure and increasing the drag. As expected, the ramp lower corner bubble was highly receptive to periodic excitation introduced from four addressable piezo-fluidic actuators situated at the ramp lower corner. Total drag was reduced by 3–11%, depending on the model incidence. There are indications that the flow in the wake of the model is also significantly steadier when the bubble at the lower ramp corner is eliminated. The vortex system is tighter and steadier when the ramp-corner bubble is eliminated.     

Evaluation of the drag force by integrating the energy dissipation rate in stokes flow for 2D domains using the FEM

The total drag force on the surface of a body, which is the sum of the form drag and the skin friction drag in a 2D domain, is numerically evaluated by integrating the energy dissipation rate in the whole domain for an incompressible Stokes fluid. The finite element method is used to calculate both the energy dissipation rate in the whole domain as well as the drag on the boundary of the body. The evaluation of the drag and the energy dissipation rate are post-processing operations which are carried out after the velocity field and the pressure field for the flow over a particular profile have been obtained. The results obtained for the flow over three different but constant area profiles—a circle, an ellipse and a cross-section of a prolate spheroid—with uniform inlet velocity are presented and it is shown that the total drag force times the velocity is equal to the total energy dissipation rate in the entire finite flow domain. Hence, by calculating the energy dissipation rate in the domain with unit velocity specified at the far-field boundary enclosing the domain, the drag force on the boundary of the body can be obtained.     

Drag on two nonuniformly structured flocs moving along the axis of a cylindrical tube

The boundary effect on the drag on two identical, nonuniformly structured flocs moving along the axis of a cylindrical tube filled with a Newtonian fluid is investigated at a small to medium larger Reynolds number. A two-layer model is adopted to simulate various possible structures of a floc, and the flow field inside is described by Darcy–Brinkman model. The results of numerical simulation reveal that a convective flow is present in the rear region of a floc when Reynolds number is on the order of 40. The presence of the tube wall and/or the porous structure of a floc has the effect of reducing that convective flow. For a fixed level of the volume-average permeability of a floc, the influence of the tube wall on the drag depends upon floc structure; the influence on a nonuniformly structured floc is more significant than that on a uniformly structured floc. The more nonuniform the floc structure, the more appreciable the deviation of the drag coefficient–Reynolds number curve from a Stokes’-law-like relation becomes. The smaller the volume-average permeability of a floc and/or the smaller the separation distance between the two flocs, the greater is the deviation, but the presence of the tube wall has the effect of reducing that deviation.     

Drag on an ellipsoid particle in free-molecular plasma flow

Based on the analysis of molecular gas dynamics, the drag and moment acting on an ellipsoid particle of revolutionX ²/a ²+Y ²/a ²+Z ²/c ²=1, as an example of nonspherical particles, are studied under the condition of free-molecular plasma flow with thin plasma sheaths. A nonzero moment which causes nonspherical particle self-oscillation and self-rotation around its own axis in the plasma flow—similar to the pitching moment in aerodynamics—is discovered for the first time. When the ratio of axis lengthc/a is unity, the moment is zero and the drag formula are reduced to the well-known results of spherical particles. The effects of the particle-plasma relative velocity, the plasma temperature, and the particle materials on the drag and moment are also investigated.     

船舶水下减阻抗污涂层的研究综述

船舶由于在航行时受到各种阻力,消耗了大量能量,增加了航行成本。船舶水下阻力的来源可以大致分为船体阻力和生物质附加阻力。本文基于对阻力和生物质黏附形成过程的分析,介绍了水下减阻领域的进展突破,总结了具有减阻、抗污性质的涂层研究情况,从超疏水、超亲水减阻材料和自抛光防污涂料、低表面能抗黏附材料、防污剂等方面,对其中相关的科学问题和解决方法进行了综述。     

Wall shear stress modified by bubbles in a horizontal channel flow of silicone oil in the transition region

We performed laboratory experiments on bubbly channel flows using silicone oil, which has a low surface tension and clean interface to bubbles, as a test fluid to evaluate the wall shear stress modification for different regimes of bubble migration status. The channel Reynolds numbers of the flow ranged from 1000 to 5000, covering laminar, transition and turbulent flow regimes. The bubble deformation and swarms were classified as packing, film, foam, dispersed, and stretched states based on visualization of bubbles as a bulk void fraction changed. In the dispersed and film states, the wall shear stress reduced by 9% from that in the single-phase condition; by contrast, the wall shear stress increased in the stretched, packing, and foam states. We carried out statistical analysis of the time-series of the wall shear stress in the transition and turbulent-flow regimes. Variations of the PDF of the shear stress and the higher order moments in the statistic indicated that the injection of bubbles generated pseudo-turbulence in the transition regime and suppressed drag-inducing events in the turbulent regime. Bubble images and measurements of shear stress revealed a correlated wave with a time lag, for which we discuss associated to the bubble dynamics and effective viscosity of the bubble mixture in wall proximity.     

明渠层流近床面颗粒拖曳力研究

泥沙颗粒受到的拖曳力是泥沙运动的主要驱动力,而当前应用于计算流体力学-离散颗粒法(CFD-DPM)耦合模型进行水沙运动模拟的泥沙颗粒拖曳力公式均没有考虑明渠流底床边壁作用的影响。求解不可压缩Navier-Stokes方程,对明渠层流不同雷诺数条件下床面附近不同高度处颗粒所受拖曳力进行了模拟,根据模拟结果变化规律,提出了综合考虑床面和水流惯性对标准拖曳力影响的修正拖曳力计算公式。与常用的单颗粒标准拖曳力公式和考虑遮蔽效应的多颗粒拖曳力公式相比,采用本文修正公式得到的水沙作用力更接近高精度数值解,应用于CFD-DPM输沙模拟获得的输沙结果与输沙率公式结果一致,应用分析表明输沙模拟应当采用粗糙底床边界。     

Analysis of polymer drag reduction mechanisms from energy budgets

The transfer of energy in drag reducing viscoelastic flows is analyzed through a sequence of energetic budgets that include the mean and turbulent kinetic energy, and the mean polymeric energy and mean elastic potential energy. Within the context of single-point statistics, this provides a complete picture of the energy exchange between the mean, turbulent and polymeric fields. The analysis utilizes direct simulation data of a fully developed channel flow at a moderately high friction Reynolds number of 1000 and at medium (30%) and high (58%) drag reduction levels using a FENE-P polymeric model.Results show that the primary effect of the interaction between the turbulent and polymeric fields is to transfer energy from the turbulence to the polymer, and that the magnitude of this transfer does not change between the low and high drag reduction flows. This one-way transfer, with an amplitude independent of the drag reduction regime, comes in contradiction with the purely elastic coupling which is implicit within the elastic theory of the polymer drag reduction phenomenon by Tabor and De Gennes (Europhys. Lett. 2, pp. 519–522, 1986).