New research to uncover flow separation mechanisms
The overall aim of the ICOMASEF (Instability and control of massively separated flows) project was to combine numerical and experimental methods to better understand the instability, control and noise generated by flow separation. Project members made excellent progress on all fronts. Developments include numerical methods for computing optimal inflow perturbations in separated flows, and new tools for unsteady computational fluid dynamics and instability analysis of incompressible separated flows. Theoretical work was geared towards developing new algorithms for the analysis of compressible separated flows and the modelling of aeroacoustic behaviour arising from separated flows such as undercarriages or wind turbines. Studies were also conducted on instabilities in open cavity flows, and analysis and control of vortex-induced vibrations. Researchers achieved knowledge-exchange through numerous secondments and produced 30 publications. In 2012, the project held the fifth Global Flow Instability and Control Symposium in Crete that focused on the identification and control of fluid flow global instabilities in real-world applications. An international meeting on massively separated flows focusing on instability, control and noise generated by flow separation from the incompressible to the hypersonic regime was organised in Prato in 2013. This focused workshop brought together leading specialists from the US, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia and a number of European countries to assess the state of the art in theory, experimentation and computation of massively separated flows in aeronautics and related fields. In 2014, the project also held the eighth IUTAM Symposium on Laminar-Turbulent transition in Rio de Janeiro.
Keywords
Flow separation, drag, aircraft wings, turbine blades, instability, noise
