Organized Oscillations of Initially-Turbulent Flow Past a Cavity

Flow past an open cavity is known to give rise to self-sustained oscillations in a wide variety of configurations, including slotted-wall, wind and water tunnels, slotted flumes, bellows-type pipe geometries, high-head gates and gate slots, aircraft components and internal piping systems. These cavity-type oscillations are the origin of coherent and broadband sources of noise and, if the structure is sufficiently flexible, flow-induced vibration as well. Moreover, depending upon the state of the cavity oscillation, substantial alterations of the mean drag may be induced. In the following, the state of knowledge of flow past cavities, based primarily on laminar inflow conditions, is described within a framework based on the flow physics. Then, the major unresolved issues for this class of flows will be delineated. Self-excited cavity oscillations have generic features, which are assessed in detail in the reviews of Rockwell and Naudascher, Rockwell, Howe and Rockwell. These features, which are illustrated in the schematic of Figure 1, are: (i) interaction of a vorticity concentration(s) with the downstream corner, (ii) upstream influence from this corner interaction to the sensitive region of the shear layer formed from the upstream corner of the cavity; (iii) conversion of the upstream influence arriving at this location to a fluctuation in the separating shear layer; and (iv) amplification of this fluctuation in the shear layer as it develops in the streamwise direction. In view of the fact that inflow shear-layer in the present investigation is fully turbulent, item (iv) is of particular interest. It is generally recognized, at least for laminar conditions at separation from the leading-corner of the cavity, that the disturbance growth in the shear layer can be described using concepts of linearized, inviscid stability theory, as shown by Rockwell, Sarohia, and Knisely and Rockwell. As demonstrated by Knisely and Rockwell, on the basis of experiments interpreted with the aid of linearized theory, not only the fundamental component of the shear layer instability may be present, but a number of additional, primarily lower frequency components can exist as well. In fact, the magnitude of these components can be of the same order as the fundamental component. These issues have not been addressed for the case of a fully-turbulent in-flow and its separation from the leading corner of the cavity.