ALBERT

Description: In this work, the flow around a circular cylinder is investigated at Reynolds numbers ranging from 79 000 up to 238 000 by means of a combined acquisition system based on Temperature Sensitive Paint (TSP) and particle velocimetry. The proposed setup allows simultaneous and time-resolved measurement of absolute temperature and relative skin friction fields onto the cylinder surface and near-wake velocity field. Combination of time-resolved surface measurements and planar near-field velocity data allows the investigation of the profound modifications undergone by the wall shear stress topology and its connections to the near-field structure as the flow regime travels from the sub-critical to the critical regime. Laminar boundary-layer separation, transition, and re-attachment are analyzed in the light of temperature, relative skin friction maps, and Reynolds stress fields bringing about a new perspective on the relationship between boundary layer development and shear layer evolution. The fast-responding TSP employed allows high acquisition frequency and calculation of power spectral density from surface data. Correlation maps of surface and near-wake data provide insight into the relationship between boundary-layer evolution and vortex shedding. We find that as the Reynolds number approaches the critical state, the separation line oscillations feature an increasingly weaker spectrum peak compared to the near-wake velocity spectrum. In the critical regime, separation line oscillations are strongly reduced and the correlation to the local vorticity undergoes an overall decrease giving evidence of modifications in the vortex shedding mechanism.

Description: A systematical method is formulated for extracting skin-friction fields from Temperature Sensitive Paint (TSP) images in the sense of time-averaging and phase-averaging. The method is applied to an underwater cylinder in crossflow at two subcritical regimes ( Re = 72 000 and 144 000). TSP maps are decomposed in a time-averaged, a phase-averaged, and a random component. The asymptotic form of the energy equation at the wall provides an Euler-Lagrange equation set that is solved numerically to gain the relative skin friction time- and phase-averaged fields from the TSP surface temperature maps. The comparison of the time averaged relative skin-friction profiles with the literature data shows an excellent agreement on the whole laminar boundary layer up to the laminar separation line. Downstream of separation, time averaged results identify the secondary reattachment/separation events, which are lost in the available literature data. The periodic behavior of the skin-friction is taken, describing how the laminar separation bubble evolves by providing the time history of the laminar separation line and of the secondary reattachment/separation over the entire vortex shedding period. Instantaneous skin friction maps reveal the existence of coherent structures by capturing their footprint on the cylinder’s surface. An array of Π -shaped traces marks the existence of counter-rotating, streamwise-oriented vortices just before the laminar separation line. Their interaction with the laminar boundary layer and with the separation line is briefly described. An example of the intermittent excerpt of their influence through the laminar separation line is reported.