Attenuation of boundary-layer instabilities for natural laminar flow design on supersonic highly swept wings

To meet the challenge of drag reduction for next-generation supersonic transport aircraft,increasing attention has been focused on Natural Laminar Flow(NLF)technology.However,the highly swept wings and high-Reynolds-number conditions of such aircraft dramatically amplify Crossflow(CF)instabilities inside boundary layers,making it difficult to maintain a large laminar flow region.To explore novel NLF designs on supersonic wings,this article investigates the mechanisms underlying the attenuation of Tollmien-Schlichting(TS)and CF instabilities by modifying pressure distributions.The evolution of TS and CF instabilities are evaluated under typical pressure distributions with different leading-edge flow acceleration region lengths,pressure coefficient slopes and pressure coefficient deviations.The results show that shortening the leading-edge flow acceleration region and using a flat pressure distribution are favorable for suppressing CF instabilities,and keeping a balance of disturbance growth between positive and negative wave angles is favorable for attenuating TS instabilities.Based on the uncovered mechanisms,a strategy of supersonic NLF design is proposed.Examination of the proposed strategy at a 60°sweep angle and Ma=2 presents potential to exceed the conventional NLF limit and achieve a transition Reynolds number of 17.6million,which can provide guidance for NLF design on supersonic highly swept wings.

Effect of capacitance on ZnO-Bi_2O_3-Yb_2O_3 based varistor for nanosecond transients

The microstructure and electrical properties of ZnO-Bi2O3-Yb2O3 based varistor ceramics were investigated with various temperature effects from 900°C to 1050°C.From the results,it was observed that the increase of sintering temperature offers a reduced capacitive effect from 0.460 nF to 0.321 nF.Furthermore,the grain sizes of varistors were varied from 6.8μm to 9.8μm.The consequence of such smaller grain sizes provided a better voltage gradient of about 895 V/mm for the disc sintered at 900°C and fallen drastically to 410 V/mm for the sample sintered at 1050°C.In addition,there was an increase of non-linearity index to a maximum value of 36.0 and reduced leakage current of 0.026 mA/cm2.However,the density of the varistor decreased with an increase of temperature from 5.41 g/cm3 to 5.24 g/cm3.With this base,the influence of varistor capacitance and high voltage gradient were scrutinized and it led an improved transition speed of the varistor assembly from non-conduction to conduction mode during intruding nanosecond transients.

Numerical research on airfoil transition delay by alternative current dielectric barrier discharge actuation

A Dielectric Barrier Discharge(DBD) plasma actuator can create a body force which locally accelerates the base flow leading to an attenuation of broadband disturbance to delay the transition. In this study, numerical simulation on an NLF0416 airfoil is conducted to investigate transition delay and drag reduction by a DBD plasma actuator. To simulate plasma’s effect more accurately, boundary-layer data is acquired from Reynolds Averaged Navier Stocks(RANS) equations instead of laminar boundary layer equations, although RANS equations need a much finer boundary-layer grid, and the linear stability analysis method is used to analyze the boundary layer and get the transition point. In this study, the influences of different actuation intensities and positions are investigated, and results show that if the actuation intensity is stronger and the actuation position is closer to the base transition point, more drag reduction can be obtained. However, the efficiency of plasma transition delay is really low. For example, when the actuation voltage is 16 k V,the actuation frequency is 1 k Hz, and the main Mach number is 0.1, the saved power due to drag reduction is about 5.09 W, but the power consumed is about 32.61 W, and the efficiency is just15.6%.

Instability of cylinder wake under open-loop active control

Instability of a wake controlled by a streamwise Lorentz force is investigated through a Floquet stability analysis. The streamwise Lorentz force, which is a two-dimensional control input created by an electromagnetic actuator located on the cylinder surface,adjusts the base flow to affect the three-dimensional wake instability and achieve wake stabilization and transition delay. The instability mode at a Reynolds number Re = 300 can be transformed from B to A with N = 1.0, where N is an interaction number representing the strength of the Lorentz force relative to the inertial force in the fluid. The wake flow is Floquet stable when N increases to 1.3. The spanwise perturbation wavelengths are 3.926 D and 0.822 D in the modes A and B, respectively, where D is the cylinder diameter. In addition, the oscillating amplitudes of drag and lift are reduced with the increase in the interaction number. Particle tracing is used to explore the essential physical mechanism for mode transformation. The path lines show that suppression of flow separation hinders the fluid deformation and rotation, leading to the decrease in elliptic and hyperbolic instability regions, which is the material cause of mode transformation.All of the results indicate that wake stabilization and transition delay can be achieved under open-loop active control via the streamwise Lorentz force.