Transient dynamics of the flow around a NACA 0015 airfoil using fluidic vortex generators

The unsteady activation or deactivation of fluidic vortex generators on a NACA 0015 airfoil is studied to understand the transient dynamics of flow separation control. The Reynolds number is high enough and the boundary layer is tripped, so the boundary layer is fully turbulent prior to separation. Conditional PIV of the airfoil wake is obtained phase-locked to the actuator trigger signal, allowing reconstruction of the transient processes. When the actuators are impulsively turned on, the velocity field in the near wake exhibit a complex transient behavior associated with the formation and shedding of a starting vortex. When actuation is stopped, a more gradual process of the separation dynamics is found. These results are in agreement with those found in the literature in comparable configurations. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition of phase-locked velocity fields reveals low-dimensional transient dynamics for the attachment and separation processes, with 98% of the fluctuation energy captured by the first four modes. The behavior is quantitatively well captured by a four-dimensional dynamical system with the corresponding mode amplitudes. Analysis of the first temporal POD modes accurately determines typical time scales for attachment and separation processes to be respectively t+=10 and 20 in conventional non-dimensional values. This study adds to experimental investigations of this scale with essential insight for the targeted closed-loop control.