Viscous drag reduction plays a vital role in increasing the performance of vehicles. However, there are only so many measurement techniques that can quickly and accurately measure this when compared to pressure drag measurement techniques. The current study makes use of one of the direct and robust measurement techniques that exist, called the Oil Film Interferometry (OFI) to estimate skin friction on the NASA/Virginia Tech BeVERLI (Benchmark Validation Experiment for RANS and LES Investigations) hill. This project aims to develop a detailed database of non-equilibrium, separated turbulent boundary layer flows obtained through wind tunnel experiments for CFD validation. Skin friction measurements are obtained at specific critical locations on the hill and in its close proximity. The challenges involved in obtaining skin friction data from these locations are discussed in detail. Detailed discussions on the experimental setup and data processing methodology are presented. Qualitative and quantitative results from each measurement location are discussed along with uncertainties to explain certain key flow physics. Additionally, skin friction coefficients from selected overlapping measurement locations from another experimental flow measurement technique called Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) are compared with OFI, and a cross-instrument study is performed. Finally, results from well-refined RANS CFD simulations are assessed with the experimental results, and critical improvement areas are identified. / Master of Science / Drag force is a parameter that significantly contributes to the performance efficiency of any vehicle moving in a fluid. This force is categorised into two types - pressure and viscous drag- both of which need to be minimised as much as possible to contribute towards higher vehicle performance. While there are numerous measurement techniques and documentation currently available to measure pressure drag, this is not the case with the measurement of viscous drag. Skin friction measurement directly relates to the estimation of viscous drag, but accurate and quick measurement of this quantity highly challenging with countable measurement techniques currently available. Through this project, BeVERLI (Benchmark Validation Experiment for RANS and LES Investigations), a detailed documentation is developed for accurate measurement of skin friction through Oil Film Interferometry (OFI). The results obtained through this measurement is explained with a detailed experimental procedure as well as using a data processing code. The accuracy of these results are then discussed with the results from another flow measurement technique called Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) and from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

The velocity fields of high Reynolds number, turbulent, wall boundary layers in non-equilibrium pressure gradients are experimentally investigated. Experiments in two wall configurations were performed; one with a hydrodynamically smooth test wall composed of flat aluminum panels, and the other with a rough surface consisting of 2 mm tall, staggered, circular cylindrical elements. A representative set of pressure gradient distributions were generated on the research wall by a systematically rotated NACA 0012 airfoil placed in a wind tunnel section to determine the functional dependence of the boundary layer formation on pressure gradient. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) was the primary measurement technique used to determine time-resolved features of the velocity flow field. newline{}newline{} It is shown that regardless of wall condition and Reynolds number, the non-equilibrium turbulent boundary layers exhibit increasingly non-local behavior with streamwise development. This is apparent as a lag to the pressure gradient distribution observed in the streamwise developing integrated boundary layer parameters. These ``history effects" are also prevalent in mean velocity profiles which are exhibited as a cross-over of the favorable and adverse pressure gradient profiles in the logarithmic layer. Similar cross-over points are observed in the Reynolds shear and normal stresses, particularly at the streamwise station downstream of the pressure gradient switch. The primary effect of the rough wall is to increase the magnitude of flow scales, and, while they exhibit the same qualitative history effects as the smooth wall, the rough wall flows show an earlier relaxation to equilibrium. Despite inherent uncertainties of indirect skin friction methods for the rough wall, the effective sandgrain roughness parameter k_s does not show a functional dependency to pressure gradient history. An evaluation of the wall-similarity hypothesis solely based on boundary layer thickness to roughness parameter ratios delta/k_s is insufficient and additional parameters such as pressure gradient histories, local roughness Reynolds numbers, and bias uncertainties due to instrument spatial resolution must be considered. / Doctor of Philosophy / In the interface between a surface and a moving fluid is the boundary layer where high shear and viscous stresses cause the bulk velocity to decrease to zero. When turbulent, this region of fluid is characterized by random, chaotic, and fluctuating motions of varying sizes. Parameters such as pressure gradients and geometric irregularities of the surface, referred to as roughness, can increase fluctuating pressures and velocities within the boundary layer and cause unwanted noise, vibration, and increased drag. Although many studies have evaluated boundary layers with either roughness or pressure gradient independently, most surfaces in practical application are susceptible to the compounding influences of both of these parameters. Thus, it is necessary to expand the current knowledge database to include complex flow fields necessary to improve data driven modeling and vehicle design.newline{}newline{} This study focuses on experimental observations of the turbulent velocity field developing in both a rough and smooth wall boundary layer that is induced to a family of bi-directional pressure gradients generated by the pressure field of a rotating airfoil inside in a wind tunnel. Through statistical observations of the velocity field it was found that the varying pressure gradients caused the flow to develop non-local dependencies such that the response of the downstream boundary layer was dependent on the upstream flow history. The principal effect of roughness was to increase the magnitude of turbulent scales, but to show the same qualitative response to the pressure gradient history as seen in a smooth wall flow. However, direct comparison of rough and smooth wall turbulence statistics by means of the ``wall-similarity hypothesis" requires careful consideration of multiple parameters including these flow histories, scales prescribed by roughness parameters, and bias errors from experiment under-resolution of the velocity field.

The reliable prediction of turbulent non-equilibrium flows is of high academic and industrial interest in several engineering fields. Most turbulent flows are often predicted using single-time-scale Reynolds-Averaged-Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence models which assume the flows can be modelled through a single time or length scale which is an admittedly incorrect assumption. Therefore they are not expected to capture the lag in the response of the turbulence in non-equilibrium flows. In attempts to improve prediction of these flows, by taking into consideration some features of the turbulent kinetic energy spectrum, the multiple-time-scale models arose. A number of two-scale models have been proposed, but so far their use has been rather limited.This work thus focusses on the development of two-time-scale approaches. Two two-time-scale linear-eddy-viscosity models, referred to as NT1 and NT2 models, have been developed and the initial stages of the development of two-time-scale non-linear-eddy-viscosity models are also reported. The models' coefficients have been determined through asymptotic analysis of decaying grid turbulence, homogeneous shear flows and the flow in a boundary layer in local equilibrium. Three other important features of these models are that there is consistent partition of the large and the small scales for all above limiting cases, model sensitivity to the partition and production rate ratios and sensitivity of the eddy viscosity sensitive to the mean strain rates.The models developed have been tested through computations of a wide range of flows such as homogeneous shear and normally strained flows, fully developed channel flows, zero-pressure-gradient, adverse-pressure-gradient, favourable-pressure-gradient and oscillatory boundary layer flows, fully developed oscillatory and ramp up pipe flows and steady and pulsated backward-facing-step flows.The proposed NT1 and NT2 two-scale models have been shown to perform well in all test cases, being, among the benchmarked models tested, the models which best performed in the wide range of dimensionless shear values of homogeneous shear flows, the only linear-eddy-viscosity models which predicted well the turbulent kinetic energy in the normally strained cases and the only models which showed satisfactory sensitivity in predicting correctly the reattachment point in the unsteady backward facing step cases with different forcing frequencies. Although the development of the two-time-scale non-linear-eddy-viscosity models is still in progress, the interim versions proposed here have resulted in predictions of the Reynolds normal stresses similar to those of much more complex models in all test cases studied and in predictions of the turbulent kinetic energy in normally strained flows which are better than those of the other models tested in this study.

Normal shock problems in high enthalpy flows are of special interests to aerodynamicists and fluid dynamicists. When the shock Mach number become hypersonic and increasing further, the gas passing through the shock is compressed resulting in increase in temperature and pressure. As the Mach number increases the internal degrees of freedom of the diatomic molecules are activated to an increasing extent when it crosses the shock resulting dissociation especially for high enthalpy flows. Hence dissociation of diatomic molecules must be taken into account in the determination of some of the aerodynamic parameters. This thermal and chemical process can be divided into three types such as nearly frozen, non-equilibrium and nearly non-equilibrium depending on the rates of reaction and excitation. For typical re-entry conditions of spacecrafts into a planets atmosphere, dissociation reactions of the molecules is dominant in the stagnation flow. Further in the stagnation region of the flow field one of the most important parameter that characterizes the flow field is the shock stand-off distance. This parameter is often employed for validation purposes of numerical methods as well as for non-reactive and reactive gases. For high Mach number flows the shock is very close to the body hence experimental determination of shock stand-off distance is very difficult and there would be relatively large errors. Therefore the theoretical determination of this parameter is of great significance in the discussion of this physical phenomenon. There are some works which presents how the dissociation behind shock affects the shock stand-off distance. Thus the dissociation behind the shock is a very important process which has great impact in aerodynamic flight and design. In this present work we studied how dissociation of diatoms occur behind a normal shock. Treanor and Marrone (1962) proposed CVD(coupled vibration-dissociation) model for diatoms by assuming diatom as a harmonic oscillator with a cut-off level. But actually diatoms are not harmonic oscillator, because spectroscopic data of energy level spacing is not like harmonic oscillator. For this reason, Treanor, Rich, and Rehm(1968) used anharmonic oscillator model for diatoms to study vibrational relaxation. Taking the anharmonicity of diatom, Philip Morse(1929) gave a formula for potential energy levels for diatoms, which is known to express the experimental values quite accurately. Unlike the energy levels of the harmonic oscillator potential, which are evenly spaced , the Morse potential level spacing decreases as the energy approaches the dissociation energy and then it is continuous. So it is quite accurate to take Morse oscillator theory for diatomic dissociation instead of harmonic oscillator with a cut-off level. We have used Morse oscillator theory to derive a dissociation-recombination reaction rate equation for diatom. To derive the rate equation we have used the transition probability between different vibrational energy levels . The rate equation is numerically solved to get the different flow variables behind the shock. The result of the present work has been compared with some of the previous work. Some of the flow variables are well matching with the previous work and some has discrepancy near the shock but well matching after few distance from the shock. We have also studied under what conditions the post shock flow shows self-similar behavior in its scaling relations. It is shown that as far as there is no dissociation, we could expect to obtain self-similar solutions. However, when there is dissociation, the non-equillibrium nature of the phenomenon disrupts the self-similar nature of the flow.

The numerical modelling of the VKI-Longshot facility remains a challeng-ing task as it requires multi-physical numerical methods in order to simulate all the components. In the current dissertation, numerical tools were developed in order to study each component of the facility separately and a deep investigations of each stage of the shot were performed. This helped to better understand the different processes involved in the flow development inside this hypersonic wind tunnel. However the numerical computation of different regions of the facility treated as independent from each others remains an approximation at best.The accuracy of the rebuilding code for determining the free stream conditions and the total enthalpy in the VKI-Longshot facility was investigated by using a series of unsteady numerical computations of axisymmetric hypersonic flow over a heat flux probe. Good agreement was obtained between the numerical results and the measured data for both the stagnation pressure and the heat flux dur- ing the useful test time.The driver-driven part of the Longshot facility was modelled using the quasi one-dimensional Lagrangian solver L1d2. The three main conditions used for the experiments —low, medium and high Reynolds number —were considered.The chambrage effect due to the junction between the driver and the driven tubes in the VKI-Longshot facility was investigated. The computation showed great ben- efit of the chambrage in increasing the speed of the piston and thus the final compression ratio of the test gas.Two dimensional simulations of the flow in the driver and the driven tube were performed using Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) solver in COOLFLuiD. A parallel multi-domain strategy was developed in order to integrate the moving piston within the computational domain.The computed pressure in the reservoir is compared to the one provided by the experiment and good agreement was obtained for both con- editions.Finally, an attempt was made to compute the starting process of the flow in the contoured nozzle. The transient computation of the flow showed how the primary shock initiates the flow in the nozzle before reaching the exit plan at time of 1.5 [ms] after the diaphragm rupture. The complex interactions of the reflected shocks in the throat raise the temperature above 9500 [K] which was not expected. Chemical dissociation of Nitrogen was not taken into account during this transient investigation which may play a key role considering the range of temperature reached near the throat. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

<p dir="ltr">Laser absorption spectroscopy (LAS) is a widely used technique to acquire path-integrated measurements of gas properties such as temperature and mole fraction. Although extremely useful, the application of LAS to study heterogeneous combustion environments can be challenging. For example, beam steering can be one such challenge that arises during measurements in heterogeneous combustion environments such as metallized propellant flames or measurements at high-pressure conditions. The ability to only obtain path integrated measurements has been a major challenge of conventional LAS techniques, especially in characterizing combustion environments with a non-uniform thermo-chemical distribution along the line of sight (LOS). Additionally, simultaneous measurements of multiple species using LAS with narrow-bandwidth lasers often necessitates employing multiple light sources. Aerospace applications, such as characterizing hypersonic flows may require ultrashort time resolution to study fast-evolving chemistry. Similarly, atmospheric entry most often requires measurements of atoms and molecules that absorb at wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet to mid-infrared. The availability of appropriate light sources for such measurements has been limited. In the past, several researchers have come up with diagnostic techniques to overcome the above-mentioned challenges to a certain extent. Most often, these solutions have been need-based while compromising on other diagnostic capabilities. Therefore, LAS diagnostics capable of acquiring broadband measurements with ultrafast time resolution and the ability to acquire measurements at wavelengths in ultraviolet through mid-infrared is required to study advanced combustion systems and for the development of advanced aerospace systems for future space missions. Ultrafast laser absorption spectroscopy is one such technique that provides broadband measurements, enabling simultaneous multi-species and high-pressure measurements. The light source utilized for ULAS provides the ultrafast time resolution necessary for resolving fast-occurring chemistry and more importantly the ability to acquire measurements at a wide range of wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet to far-infrared. The development and application of ULAS for characterizing propellant flames and hypersonic flows under non-equilibrium conditions by overcoming the above-mentioned challenges is presented here. </p><p>This work describes the development of a single-shot ultrafast laser absorption spectroscopy (ULAS) diagnostic for simultaneous measurements of temperature and concentrations of CO, NO, and H₂O in flames and aluminized fireballs of HMX (C₄H₈N₈O₈). Ultrashort (55 fs) pulses from a Ti:Sapphire oscillator emitting near 800 nm were amplified and converted into the mid-infrared through optical parametric amplification (OPA) at a repetition rate of 5 kHz. Ultimately, pulses with a spectral bandwidth of ≈600 cm^-1 centered near 4.9 µm were utilized in combination with a mid-infrared spectrograph to measure absorbance spectra of CO, NO, and H₂O across a 30 nm bandwidth with a spectral resolution of 0.3 nm. The gas temperature and species concentrations were determined by least-squares fitting simulated absorbance spectra to measured absorbance spectra. Measurements of temperature, CO, NO, and H₂O were acquired in an HMX flame burning in air at atmospheric pressure and the measurements agree well with previously published results. Measurements were also acquired in fireballs of HMX with and without 16.7 wt% H-5 micro-aluminum. Time histories of temperature and column densities are reported with a 1-σ precision of 0.4% for temperature and 0.3% (CO), 0.6% (NO), and 0.5% (H₂O), and 95% confidence intervals (C.I.) of 2.5% for temperature and 2.5% (CO), 11% (NO), and 7% (H₂O), thereby demonstrating the ability of ULAS to provide high-fidelity, multi-parameter measurements in harsh combustion environments. The results indicate that the addition of the micron-aluminum increases the fireball peak temperature by ≈100 K and leads to larger concentrations of CO. The addition of aluminum also increases the duration fireballs remain at elevated temperatures above 2000 K.</p><p dir="ltr">Next, the application of ULAS for dual-zone temperature and multi-species (CO, NO, H₂O, CO₂, HCl, and HF) measurements in solid-propellant flames is presented. ULAS measurements were acquired at three different central wavelengths (5.121 µm, 4.18 µm, and 3.044 µm) for simultaneous measurements of temperature and: 1) CO, NO, and H₂O, 2) CO₂ and HCl, and 3) HF and H₂O. Absorption measurements with a spectral resolution of 0.35 nm and bandwidth of 7 cm^-1, 18 cm^-1, and 35 cm^-1, respectively were acquired. In some cases, a dual-zone absorption spectroscopy model was implemented to accurately determine the gas temperature in the hot flame core and cold flame boundary layer via broadband absorption measurements of CO₂, thereby overcoming the impact of line-of-sight non-uniformities. Results illustrate that the hot-zone temperature of CO₂ agrees well with the equilibrium flame temperature and single-zone thermometry of CO, the latter of which is insensitive to the cold boundary layer due to the corresponding oxidation of CO to CO₂.</p><p dir="ltr">The initial development and implementation of an ultraviolet and broadband ultrafast-laser-absorption-imaging (UV-ULAI) diagnostic for one dimensional (1D) imaging of temperature and CN via its <i>B</i>²Σ⁺←<i>X</i>²Σ⁺absorption bands near 385 nm. The diagnostic was demonstrated by acquiring single-shot measurements of 1D temperature and CN profiles in HMX flames at a repetition rate of 25 Hz. Ultrashort pulses (55 fs) at 800 nm were generated using a Ti:Sapphire oscillator and then amplification and wavelength conversion to the ultraviolet was carried out utilizing an optical parametric amplifier and frequency doubling crystals. The broadband pulses were spectrally resolved using a 1200 l/mm grating and imaged on an EMCCD camera to obtain CN absorbance spectra with a resolution of ≈0.065 nm and a bandwidth of ≈4 nm (i.e. 260 cm^-1). Simulated absorbance spectra of CN were fit to the measured absorbance spectra using non-linear curve fitting to determine the gas properties. The spatial evolution of gas temperature and CN concentration near the burning surface of an HMX flame was measured with a spatial resolution of ≈10 µm. 1D profiles of temperature and CN concentration were obtained with a 1-σ spatial precision of 49.3 K and 4 ppm. This work demonstrates the ability of UV-ULAI to acquire high-precision, spatially resolved absorption measurements with unprecedented temporal and spatial resolution. Further, this work lays the foundation for ultraviolet imaging of numerous atomic and molecular species with ultrafast time resolution.</p><p dir="ltr">Ultraviolet ULAS was applied to characterize the temporal evolution of non-Boltzmann CN (<i>X</i>²Σ⁺) formed behind strong shock waves in N₂-CH₄ mixtures at conditions relevant to entry into Titan's atmosphere. An ultrafast (femtosecond) light source was utilized to produce 55 fs pulses near 385 nm at a repetition rate of 5 kHz and a spectrometer with a 2400 lines/mm grating was utilized to spectrally resolve the pulses after passing through the Purdue High-Pressure Shock Tube. This enabled broadband single-shot absorption measurements of CN to be acquired with a spectral resolution and bandwidth of ≈0.02 nm and ≈6 nm (≈402 cm^-1 at these wavelengths), respectively. A line-by-line absorption spectroscopy model for the <i>B</i>²Σ⁺←<i>X</i>²Σ⁺ system of CN was developed and utilized to determine six internal temperatures (two vibrational temperatures, four rotational) of CN from the (0,0), (1,1), (2,2) and (3,3) absorption bands. Measurements were acquired behind reflected shock waves in 5.65% CH₄ and 94.35% N₂ with an initial pressure of 1.56 mbar and incident shock speed of ≈2.1 km/s. For this test condition, the chemically and vibrationally frozen temperature of the mixture behind the reflected shock was 5000 K and the pressure was 0.6 atm. The high repeatability of the shock-tube experiments (0.3% variation in shock speed across tests) enabled multi-shock time histories of CN mole fraction and six internal temperatures to be acquired with a single-shot time resolution of less than 1 ns. The measurements revealed that CN <i>X</i>²Σ⁺ is non-Boltzmann rotationally and vibrationally for greater than 200 µs, thereby strongly suggesting that chemical reactions are responsible for the non-Boltzmann population distributions. </p><p><br></p>