ISSN:
1573-2703
Source:
Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
Topics:
Mathematics
,
Technology
Notes:
Abstract The series of experiments by Schubauer and Skramstad (1948) provided the first experimental evidence of the role that the instability of Tollmien-Schlichting waves played in the transition of a zero pressure-gradient flat plate boundary layer. The initial experiments studied the oscillations in the boundary layer excited by the freestream fluctuations. This was only possible after the background disturbances in the wind tunnel had been reduced to a very low level. The background wind tunnel environment excited a broad band of amplitude modulated disturbance waves that grew as they propagated downstream, eventually leading to the formation of turbulent spots. Further experiments used artificial two-dimensional harmonic excitation to produce regular wavetrains that could be directly compared with linear theory. Unfortunately, two-dimensional harmonic excitation of this type has also been used in many of the subsequent nonlinear transition investigations; the modulation of the disturbance waves, essential in nonlinear studies, has been largely ignored. Gaster and Grant (1975) used a short duration acoustic pulse to excite the boundary layer and found that the modulated wavepacket that was created admitted bursts of high frequency oscillations. These occurred at amplitudes that were insufficient to generate non-linear behaviour in purely periodic wavetrains. Gaster (1980) suggested that the modulation of the wavepacket played an important role in the non-linear region of transition. This investigation used computer generated deterministic white noise to excite the boundary layer on a flat plate through a single buried loudspeaker. This type of excitation produced amplitude modulated T-S waves at some point downstream from the source. By repeatedly exciting the boundary layer with the same white noise sequence it was possible to map the entire flow-field with a single hot-wire probe and so study the evolution of the modulated wavetrains and the eventual development of turbulent spots. The modulated wavetrains were found to grow initially according to linear theory. But downstream, departures from the linear pattern were observed at isolated time instants. The amplitude of the irregular portions of the signal increased rapidly with downstream distance until bursts of oscillations of frequencies five or six times the basic T-S frequency were observed. These regions developed even higher frequency bursts until a turbulent spot could be considered to have formed. Excitation signals of various amplitudes with different phase relations between the spectral components were used in these experiments. It was found that the phases between the Fourier components played an important role in the highly non-linear behaviour that is the precursor to a turbulent spot. Novel signal processing techniques, such as the wavelet transform and Singular Value Decomposition were used to investigate the fine structure and the propagation characteristics of the high frequency disturbances.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02383605
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