Fluid dynamics of a flow excited resonance,Part II: Flow acoustic interaction

This is the second of two companion papers in which the physics and detailed fluid dynamics of a flow excited resonance are examined. The approach is rather different from those previously used, in which stability theory has been applied to small wavelike disturbances in a linearly unstable shear layer, with an equivalent source driving the sound field which provides the feedback. In the approach used here, the physics of the flow acoustic interaction is explained in terms of the detailed momentum and energy exchanges occurring inside the fluid. Gross properties of the flow and resonance are described in terms of the parameters necessary to determine the behaviour of the feedback system. In this second paper it is shown that two relatively distinct momentum balances can be considered in the resonator neck region. One can be identified with the vortically induced pressure and velocity fluctuations and the other with the reciprocating potential flow. The fluctuating Coriolis force caused by the interaction of the potential and vortical flows is shown to be the only term in the linearized momentum equation which is not directly balanced by a fluctuating pressure gradient. This force provides the mechanism for the exchange of the mean energies associated with the mean and fluctuating momenta, respectively. A source and sink of energy are identified in which mean energy associated with fluctuating momentum is extracted from and returned to the mean flow, respectively. The imbalance between the source and sink is responsible for both the radiated acoustic power and the power carried away by the vortices as they convect downstream. This radiated acoustic power and vortically convected power, and the source and sink powers, are all of the same order of magnitude. With the vortex shedding and reciprocating potential flow “phase locked” the amplitude of the steady state oscillations is determined by the condition that the net power produced in the resonator neck (the source power less the sink power) is equal to the sum of the radiated acoustic power and that carried by the vortices.