Experimental Investigation Of Upstream Boundary Layer Acceleration On Unsteadiness Of Shock Induced Separation

This project was aimed at understanding the fundamental cause of the low frequency unsteadiness present in shock-induced turbulent separated flows. A new multi-camera, multi-laser PIV system was used to capture wide-field images of the velocity field in a Mach 2 compression ramp interaction. The PIV was acquired simultaneously with fast-response pressure measurements to identify the shock-foot location at the same time that the PIV data were captured. The measurements showed that the global structure of the interaction was substantially different depending on the location of the separation shock foot. For example, when the shock is upstream, the scale of the separated flow, the velocity fluctuations and the domain of perturbed flow, are all substantially larger than when the shock-foot is located downstream. Most importantly, a clear correlation was observed between the thickness and velocity profile in the upstream boundary layer and the shock foot position. A new technique for measuring the upstream boundary layer acceleration by using two-frame time-sequenced PIV was also developed. This involved developing new hardware and software tools, and conducting preliminary calibration experiments. This work has shown the feasibility of correlating the upstream acceleration to the shock motion and these measurements will be made in future work.