Parametric Flow Visualization of Dynamic Roughness Effects

The ever growing need in the aircraft industry to enhance the performance of a flight vehicle has led to active areas of research which focus on the control of the local boundary layer by both passive and active methods. An effective flow control mechanism can improve the performance of a flight vehicle in various ways, one of which is eliminating boundary layer separation. To be effective the mechanism not only needs to control the boundary layer as desired, but also use less energy than the resulting energy savings. In this study, the effectiveness of an active flow control technique known as dynamic roughness (DR) has been explored to eliminate the laminar separation bubble near the leading edge and also to eliminate the stall on a NACA 0012 airfoil wing.;As opposed to static roughness, dynamic roughness utilizes small time-dependent deforming elements or humps with displacement amplitudes that are on the order of the local boundary layer height to energize the local boundary layer. DR is primarily characterized by the maximum amplitude and operating frequency. A flow visualization study was conducted on a 2D NACA 0012 airfoil model at different angles of attack, and also varying the Reynolds number and DR actuation frequency with fixed maximum DR amplitude. The experimental results from this study suggests that DR is an effective method of reattaching a totally separated boundary layer. In addition, this study discusses some of the fundamental physics behind the working of DR and proposes some non-dimensional terms that may help to explain the driving force behind the mechanism