Control of shock-induced dynamic response of compliant surfaces using air-jet vortex generators

Shock-wave/turbulent boundary-layer interactions (STBLI) are unsteady and detrimental flow phenomena ubiquitous to aerospace applications. As many surfaces in aerospace systems are not rigid, the strong aerodynamic loads imposed by STBLIs result in coupled dynamics with compliant surfaces, which can harm system integrity. An established technique to alleviate the adverse effects of STBLIs is by using air-jet vortex generators (AJVGs). AJVGs induce streamwise vortices by injecting steady air-jets into the crossflow, redistributing the boundary-layer momentum and mitigating flow separation. In this study, we place an array of AJVGs upstream of a flexible panel and 24º compression ramp at Mach 2.52 to investigate the potential to modify the coupled dynamics of compliant surfaces and SWBLI.

The shock motion and panel deformation were simultaneously captured using highspeed focusing-schlieren and digital image correlation, respectively. Spectral proper orthogonal decomposition was used to resolve the unsteady dynamics of the interaction and quantify the ability of AJVGs to modify the compliant surface dynamic response. We observe that while the panel bending modes are dependent on aspect ratio, AJVG control decreases the dominant frequency of the panel vibrations and reduces the energy associated with the low frequency shock motion.