The effects of upstream mass injection by vortex generator jets on shock-induced turbulent boundary layer separation

An experimental study was conducted to investigate the effects of upstream mass injection, by means of vortex generator jets (VGJs), on the shock wave/turbulent boundary layer interaction (SWTBLI) generated by cylinder in a Mach 2 flow. The objectives of the study were: (i) to characterize the changes to the global structure of the flowfield introduced by the VGJs, and (ii) to study how the injection affected the dynamics of the separation shock foot. The injection was provided by three high-speed valves, placed across the span of the test section, which generated underexpanded jets. Two jet orientations were studied: normal to the wall, and pitched at 60° and skewed at 90° with respect to the freestream. In addition, the effects of both continuous and pulsed injection were investigated. Velocity measurements of the upstream boundary layer, VGJs, and -shock system were made using a wide-field particle image velocimetry (PIV) system, and an array of fast-response pressure transducers was used to monitor the wall pressure under the intermittent region of the interaction. The velocity measurements of the baseline case captured nearly all the relevant flow structures including the -shock and primary and secondary vortices. However, neither mean supersonic reversed flow nor the supersonic jet that presumably exists downstream of the triple point were observed. When injection was applied, the scale of the separated flow changed considerably. For normal injection, the primary vortex was nearly suppressed, while for pitched/skewed injection, the secondary vortex increased in size. Mean streamwise and transverse velocity profiles upstream of the separation shock showed that, for both jet orientations, the VGJs caused the flow in the boundary layer to accelerate. However, for normal injection, the acceleration did not extend down to the wall. Phase-averaged velocity measurements of the opening phase of the valves indicated that there is a phase lag between the jets and the response of the flow. The pressure measurements showed that continuous injection displaced the intermittent region downstream by 20%, but had little effect on the frequency content of the wall pressure signals or shock zero-crossing frequency. Pulsed injection also displaced the location of the intermittent region in the downstream direction, and the shock zero-crossing frequency was seen to increase with increasing pulsing frequency. The implications for SWTBLI control applications is that VGJs have the potential to be used as actuators owing to their effects on the unsteady characteristics of the interaction.