FM24L_12675:Fri:1240:306
XXI International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
Warsaw, Poland, August 15-21, 2004

Resonant Interactions of 3D Instability Waves in an Airfoil Boundary Layer for Harmonic and Broadband Perturbations

D. Sartorius (1), W. Wurz (1), S. Wagner (1)V. I. Borodulin (2), Y. S. Kachanov (2)
1. Institut fuer Aerodynamik und Gasdynamik, Universitaet Stuttgart, Germany
2. Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia


This paper is devoted to a systematic experimental investigation of resonant interactions of Tollmien-Schlichting (TS) waves occurred at weakly-nonlinear stages of the laminar-turbulent transition in a non-self-similar boundary layer on an airfoil with a long laminar run. The paper is aimed to analyze the importance of the TS-wave interactions in dependence on the base-flow and disturbance parameters in order to clarify two main questions: (i) how does the base flow non-uniformity influence the efficiency of the resonant interaction and (ii) when are these interactions important for the transition prediction. The experiments were carried out at controlled disturbance conditions. The TS- waves were excited in the boundary layer by a specially designed disturbance source. Several dozens of initial disturbance spectra were examined, including cases of simple tuned subharmonic triplets, regimes with frequency and spanwise- wavenumber detunings, multi-wave regimes, and regimes with excitation of broadband perturbations simulating some ?natural? transition conditions. The base flow non-self-similarity is found to influence significantly the nonlinear disturbance interactions. Several unusual properties of such interactions have been detected and investigated.



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