Coherent Structures And Wall Pressure Fluctuations Modeling In Turbulent Boundary Layers Subjected To Pressure Gradients

The flow around vehicles creates a turbulent boundary layer in the vicinity of the wall. The turbulent behavior induces pressure fluctuations that make the panels vibrate. These vibrations are then transmitted though the structure of the vehicle and radiate noise inside the cabin. The flow-induced noise levels increase with the speed of the vehicle. For this reason, aircraft manufacturers show a great interest in this topic.There are two objectives for this thesis: understand the mechanisms responsible for the wall-pressure fluctuations and predict this source of aircraft panel excitation.A study of available Large Eddy Simulation (LES) computations was performed. The database consists in simulations of turbulent boundary layer flows submitted to favorable, adverse and zero pressure gradients. This is necessary to understand the nature of the flow over curved geometries such as the aircraft flight deck. The effect of pressure gradients on coherent hairpin structures and hairpin packets could be identified and quantified based on visualization and statistical analysis methods. Linear stochastic estimation of the velocity fields revealed a pair of counter-rotating streamwise vortices above hairpin packets. These vortices have a vorticity opposite to that of the hairpins and an “inverse hairpin” model was proposed.Following the work of Ahn et al. (2010), a stochastic model for wall-pressure spectrum was developed. The idea is to build a stochastic turbulent velocity field using hairpin packets which are subjected to a mean flow. The characteristics of the packets depending on the pressure gradient are based on the analyses of the LES database. The pressure field at the wall is obtained by solving a Poisson equation. The results of the hairpin packet model are compared to numerical and experimental data. Finally, the model is used as input for a Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) simulation in order to predict the levels of vibrations of panels submitted to a turbulent boundary layer flow over a portion of an aircraft cabin.