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Surface-mounted finite-height circular cylinders and square prisms can be found in many industrial and engineering applications. The local flow fields around these bluff bodies are not yet well understood due to lack of experimental and numerical data close to the cylinder and prism. The aim of this thesis was therefore to gain an improved physical description of the flow field above the free end surface and around the cylinders and prisms. In the present experimental study, the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique was used to measure the flow field very close to these bluff bodies in the test section of a low-speed wind tunnel. Four finite circular cylinders and square prisms of aspect ratios AR = 9, 7, 5 and 3 were tested at a Reynolds number of ReD = 4.2×104. At the location of the cylinder or prism, the boundary layer thickness relative to the cylinder diameter or prism width (D) was δ/D = 1.6. PIV velocity field measurements in the near-wake region were made in a vertical plane parallel to the mean flow direction on the flow centreline (the symmetry plane), within 2D upstream and 5D downstream of the cylinder or prism. Additional PIV measurements were carried out in three orthogonal x-z, x-y, and y-z planes above the free end surface of the models. In the near-wake region of the finite circular cylinders, the large recirculation zone contained a vortex immediately behind and below the free end; this vortex was found for all four aspect ratios. A second vortex was found behind the cylinder near the cylinder-wall junction; this vortex was not observed for the cylinder of AR = 3, indicating a distinct wake structure for this cylinder. Similar to the circular cylinder case, in the near-wake region of the square prisms, a vortex was observed immediately behind and below the free end in the recirculation zone. The size and strength of this vortex increased as the aspect ratio of the prism decreased. Also, a second vortex was found near the prism-wall junction downstream of the prisms of AR = 9 and 7, while this vortex was not observed for the prisms of AR = 5 and 3. The PIV results in the near-wake regions of the circular cylinders and square prisms show that the effect of the bluff body shape (circular or square cross-section) is evident in the maximum length of the mean recirculation zone. A considerable difference was seen between the maximum length of the mean recirculation zones of the circular cylinder and square prism of AR = 9, while the shape of the bluff body does not considerably affect the length of the recirculation zones for the bodies of AR = 7, 5, and 3. The present PIV results also provided insight into the separated flow above the free ends, including the effects of AR and body shape. Above the free end of the cylinders, flow separation from the leading edge led to the formation of a mean recirculation zone on the free-end surface. The point of reattachment of the flow onto the free-end surface moved towards the trailing edge as the cylinder aspect ratio was decreased. Large regions of elevated turbulence intensity and Reynolds shear stress were found above the free end. For the finite circular cylinders, the flow pattern above the free end was similar in all three x-z planes for all aspect ratios, consisting of a cross-stream vortex at approximately x/D = 0. According to the PIV results in the x-y planes, one of the main characteristics of the flow over the free end surface of the circular cylinders was a pair of focal points at x/D ≈ 0 and near the edge of the free end. As the cylinder aspect ratio increased, the size and strength of these vortices decreased. Also, the centers of the vortices moved downstream as the aspect ratio increased. For the finite square prism, the large, separated, recirculating flow region extended into the near wake. For the square prism of AR = 3, considerable difference was seen in the free-end flow pattern compared to the more slender prisms of AR = 9, 7 and 5. In particular, a cross-stream vortex formed due to interaction between the separated flow from the leading edge of the prism and the reverse flow over the trailing edge of the free end. This vortex was seen in all three planes at different cross-stream locations for AR = 3 but only in the symmetry plane for AR = 9. Hence, the present PIV results in the x-z planes revealed the effect of the near-wake flow on the flow above the prism free end. The results also showed a considerable effect of the aspect ratio on the mean velocity field as well as the Reynolds stress fields. The results in the x-y planes showed different flow patterns for the prism of AR = 3 including wall-normal vortices close to the free end at the sides of the prism as well as two saddle points close to the corners of the trailing edge and one node downstream of the trailing edge, while for AR = 9, no vortices and node were observed. Two streamwise vortices with opposite sign of rotation were seen in the y-z plane at x/D = 0.2 for all aspect ratios. The present results illustrate in-plane vorticities originating from the vertices of the leading edge of the prism for all aspect ratios.

Evaluation of the flow field imparted by a marine vehicle reveals the underlying efficiency and performance. However, the relationship between precise design features and their impact on the flow field is not well characterized. The goal of this work is first, to investigate the thermally-stratified near field of a self-propelled marine vehicle to identify the significance of propulsion and hull-form design decisions, and second, to develop a functional mapping between an arbitrary vehicle design and its associated flow field to accelerate the design analysis process. The unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations are solved to compute near-field wake profiles, showing good agreement to experimental data and providing a balance between simulation fidelity and numerical cost, given the database of cases considered. Machine learning through convolutional networks is employed to discover the relationship between vehicle geometries and their associated flow fields with two distinct deep-learning networks. The first network directly maps explicitly-specified geometric design parameters to their corresponding flow fields. The second network considers the vehicle geometries themselves as tensors of geometric volume fractions to implicitly-learn the underlying parameter space. Once trained, both networks effectively generate realistic flow fields, accelerating the design analysis from a process that takes days to one that takes a fraction of a second. The implicit-parameter network successfully learns the underlying parameter space for geometries within the scope of the training data, showing comparable performance to the explicit-parameter network. With additions to the size and variability of the training database, this network has the potential to abstractly generalize the design space for arbitrary geometric inputs, even those beyond the scope of the training data. / Doctor of Philosophy / Evaluation of the flow field of a marine vehicle reveals the underlying performance, however, the exact relationship between design features and their impact on the flow field is not well established. The goal of this work is first, to investigate the flow surrounding a self–propelled marine vehicle to identify the significance of various design decisions, and second, to develop a functional relationship between an arbitrary vehicle design and its flow field, thereby accelerating the design analysis process. Near–field wake profiles are computed through simulation, showing good agreement to experimental data. Machine learning is employed to discover the relationship between vehicle geometries and their associated flow fields with two distinct approaches. The first approach directly maps explicitly–specified geometric design parameters to their corresponding flow fields. The second approach considers the vehicle geometries themselves to implicitly–learn the underlying relationships. Once trained, both approaches generate a realistic flow field corresponding to a user–provided vehicle geometry, accelerating the design analysis from a multi–day process to one that takes a fraction of a second. The implicit–parameter approach successfully learns from the underlying geometric features, showing comparable performance to the explicit–parameter approach. With a larger and more–diverse training database, this network has the potential to abstractly learn the design space relationships for arbitrary marine vehicle geometries, even those beyond the scope of the training database.

Within the overarching area of airplane noise, landing gear noise has been proven to be a major contributor to airframe noise. Despite a large focus given to it by past research work, landing gear noise investigations have continuously failed to include landing lights, completely disregarding their potential for seriously altering the landing gear wake structure and overall noise signature. This thesis is one of the first studies to focus on the effect of landing light orientation on landing gear wake and landing gear noise. Pressure fluctuations in the wake of a simplified single light landing gear model are investigated experimentally for several freestream velocities and at various elevations of measurement plane. The effect of the distance between the light and the landing gear strut is also investigated. Three-dimensional flow is found in the wake at the center, or zero elevation, plane. This three-dimensionality is found to be much weaker at the highest elevation from the light, where the wake is found to be primarily two-dimensional. The nature of the transition region between the three-dimensional flow and two-dimensional flow is not investigated, but it is acknowledged that a transition region exists. Complex flow behaviour leading to a wake width larger than twice the size of the light-strut assembly width is found to be present at the zero elevation, and phase-locked PIV imaging is unable to capture any periodic motion within the wake at this elevation. In contrast, the wake at the highest elevation is found to resemble the flow in the wake of circular cylinders, and phase-locked PIV imaging at this elevation clearly captures an alternate vortex shedding scheme. Due to this difference in wake structures, the periodicity at the highest elevation is found to be stronger than that observed at the zero elevation. Changes in light-strut spacing are found to inversely affect the strength of the periodicity in the wake, as larger spacing is linked to greater influence of three-dimensionality, and therefore a weaker periodicity. Changes in light-strut spacing are also found to be inversely related to the oscillation frequency of the periodicity, with the cause for this relationship possibly explained by the wider wake at increased spacing. It is found that the oscillation frequency of periodicity in the single light landing gear wake is consistently in the Strouhal number range of St=0.16-0.18 for all light-strut spacing distances, freestream velocities, and elevations. The flow around the light-strut assembly is therefore characterized as modulated flow around a cylindrical strut because alternate vortex shedding is dominant except for a slight region where the light acts to generate three-dimensionality, and because the oscillation frequency is near that of vortex shedding from a circular cylinder, St=0.19. The wakes of the single light landing gear and two-light landing gear models are compared, but neither design can be supported as quieter than the other at this time due to the unknown amount of vertical radiation from the landing gear wakes. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Near wake is the region of wake flow just behind the trailing edge of the body where the flow is strongly influenced by the upstream flow conditions and also perhaps by the charac­teristics of the body. The present work is concerned with the study of the development of turbulent near wake behind an infinitely yawed flat plate. The turbulent near wake behind an infinitely yawed flat plate is the simplest of the three-dimensional turbulent near wake flows. The present study aims at providing a set of data on the turbulent near wake behind an infinitely yawed flat plate and also at understanding the development and structure of the near wake. Detailed measurements of mean and turbulent quantities have been made using 3-hole probe, X-wire and 3-wire hotwire probes. Further an asymptotic analysis of the two-dimensional turbulent near wake flow has been formulated for the near wake behind an infinitely yawed flat plate. The feature that the near wake which is dominated by mixing of the oncoming turbulent boundary layer retains, to a large extent, the memory of the turbulent structure of the boundary layer, has been exploited to develop this analysis. The analysis leads to three regions of the wake flow (the inner near wake, the outer near wake and the far wake) for which the governing equations are derived. The matching conditions among these regions lead to logarithmic variations in both normal and longitudinal directions in the overlapping regions surrounding the inner wake. These features are validated by the present results. A computational study involving seven well known turbulence models was also under­taken in order to assess the performance of the existing turbulence models in the prediction of the turbulent near wake behind an infinitely yawed flat plate. In this study all the seven models are implemented into a common flow solver code, thus eliminating the influence of grid size, initial conditions and different numerical schemes while making the comparison. This study shows that the K - e model performs better than other models in predicting the near wake behind an infinitely yawed flat plate.

The velocity field in the wake of a small scale flexible parachute canopy was measured using two-dimensional particle image velocimetry. The experiments were performed in a water tunnel with the Reynolds number ranging from 3.0-6.0 x 104. Both a fully inflated canopy and the inflation phase were investigated in a constant freestream (i.e. an infinite mass condition). The fully inflated canopy experienced a cyclic“breathing" which corresponded to the shedding of a vortex ring from the canopy. The normalized breathing frequency had a value of 0.56 +/- 0.03. The investigation of the canopy inflation showed that during the early stages of the inflation, the boundary layer on the canopy surface remains attached to the canopy while the canopy diameter increases substantially. The boundary layer begins to separate near the apex region when the diameter is ~68% of the fully inflated diameter. The separation point then progresses upstream from the canopy apex region toward the canopy skirt. During this time period, the force rapidly increases to its maximum value while the separation point of the boundary layer moves upstream towards the skirt. The force then declines rapidly and the separated boundary layer rolls-up into a large vortex ring near the canopy skirt. At the same time, the canopy is drawn into an over-expanded state after which the cyclic breathing initiates. The unsteady potential force was estimated from the rate of change of the canopy volume. It contributed no more than 10% of the peak opening force and was only significant during the early stages of inflation. The majority of the opening force was the result of the time rate of change of the fluid impulse. It accounts for approximately 60% of the peak opening force. This result shows that the formation of the viscous wake is the primary factor in the peak drag force of the canopy.