An experimental investigation of the interaction between convecting spanwise vortices and a turbulent boundary layer

The interaction between convecting spanwise vortices and a flat plate turbulent boundary layer was studied experimentally. The results are relevant to the flow downstream of unsteady airfoils or spoilers. Vortices were generated with a rapidly pitched airfoil upstream of a test plate leading edge in a low-speed wind tunnel. By varying the height of the vortex generator the degree to which the vortices interacted with the test plate was controlled. Dynamic stall vortices of both positive and negative circulation were studied with Reynolds numbers (;The results focus on two distinct aspects of the flow, first is the decay and diffusion rates of the vortices. Only in the case where a negative circulation vortex impinges directly on the leading edge does surface interaction significantly increase the vortex decay/diffusion rate. The second aspect is the response of the turbulent boundary layer to the convecting vortices. Wall shear stress measurements show that the passage of a positive circulation vortex results in an increase in wall shear after a delay-time, while the negative circulation vortices result in a decrease in wall shear. An application of log-law scaling to the ensemble-averaged mean flow was found to produce a velocity scale which resembles one based on measured wall shear stress but is offset by a phase lag. The ratio of turbulent shear stress to the two-dimensional turbulent kinetic energy was generally not constant, although it did show a constant value across the boundary layer at different phases of the interaction.