Wind Tunnel Experiments with Flexible Plates in Transonic Flows

The evolution of adaptive shock control bump (SCB) design has seen the system flexibility increase to a point where the aerodynamic loading can affect the deformation of the plate. By studying the effects of a flexible plate subject to transonic flow the fluid structure interaction can be investigated. In this study an array of thin plates (0.4 and 0.6 mm) with different aspect ratios (1 and 1.33) are exposed to a Mach 1.4 normal shockwave. PIV is used in combination with Schlieren imaging to provide a detailed view of the flow curvature surrounding the plate as well as the global shock structure. A technique that extracts the plate deformation from the PIV images is also presented which provides fluid and structural information for each test. The relationship between plate and flow angle is discussed as well as the effect of plate stiffness and free stream influence of each plate configuration