In many areas of aerodynamics the technique of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) has proved a practical way of modelling the unsteady phenomena in numerical simulations. Few applications are as dependent on such an approach as the prediction of flow within a gas turbine combustor. Like any form of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), LES requires specification of the velocity field at the inflow boundary, with much evidence suggesting the specification of inlet turbulence can be critical to the resultant accuracy of the prediction. While a database of time-resolved velocity data may be obtained from a precursor LES calculation, this technique is prohibitively expensive for complex geometries. An alternative is to use synthetic inlet conditions obtained from experimental data High-speed Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is used here to provide planar velocity data at up to 1kHz temporal resolution in two test cases representative of gas turbine combustor flows (a vortex generator in a duct and an idealised combustor). As the data sampling rate is approaching a typical LES time-step it introduces the possibility of applying instantaneous experimental data directly as an inlet condition. However, as typical solution domain inlet regions for gas turbine combustor geometries cannot be adequately captured in a single field of PIV data, it is necessary to consider a method by which a synchronous velocity field may be obtained from multiple PIV fields that were not captured concurrently. A method is proposed that attempts to achieve this by a combined process of Linear Stochastic Estimation and high-pass filtering. The method developed can be generally applied without a priori assumptions of the flow and is demonstrated to produce a velocity field that matches very closely that of the original PIV, with no discontinuities in the velocity correlations. The fidelity and computational cost of the method compares favourably to several existing inlet condition generation methods. Finally, the proposed and existing methods for synthetic inlet condition generation are applied to LES predictions of the two test cases. There is shown to be significant differences in the resulting flow, with the proposed method showing a marked ii reduction in the adjustment period that is required to establish turbulent equilibrium downstream of the inlet. However, it is noted the presence of downstream turbulence generating features can mask any differences in the inlet condition, to the extent that the flow in the core of the combustor test case is found to be insensitive to the inlet condition applied at the entry to the feed annulus for the test conditions applied here.

Le suivi en temps réel des écoulements turbulents est une tâche difficile ayant des applications dans de nombreux domaines. Un exemple est la mesure des tourbillons de sillage au niveau des pistes d’aéroports afin d’optimiser la distance entre les avions en phase d’approche ou de décollage. Un autre exemple se rapporte au contrôle actif d’écoulements. De tels contrôles peuvent servir à réduire le bruit des avions... Cette thèse vise à développer des outils afin d’estimer en temps réel des champs de vitesse d’écoulements turbulents à partir d’un faible nombre de mesures ponctuelles. Après une étude bibliographique centrée sur une méthode de reconstruction populaire, l’estimation stochastique (SE), ses performances sont évaluées pour la prédiction de champs de vitesse issus d’écoulements de complexité croissante. La précision des estimations obtenues étant très faibles dans certains cas, une analyse précise de la méthode est effectuée. Celle-ci a montré l’effet filtrant de la SE sur le contenu spatial et temporel des champs de vitesse. De plus, le fort impact de la position des capteurs a été mis en avant. C’est pourquoi un algorithme d’optimisation de la position des capteurs est ensuite présenté. Bien que l’optimisation de la position des capteurs mène à une amélioration de la précision des prédictions obtenues par SE, elle reste néanmoins très faible pour certains cas tests. L’utilisation d’une technique issue du domaine de l’assimilation de données, le filtre de Kalman qui combine un modèle dynamique de l’écoulement avec les mesures, a donc été étudiée. Pour certains écoulements, le filtre de Kalman permet d’obtenir des prédictions plus précises que la SE. / Real time monitoring of turbulent flows is a challenging task that concerns a large range of applications. Evaluating wake vortices around the approach runway of an airport, in order to optimize the distance between lined-up aircraft, is an example. Another one touches to the broad subject of active flow control. In aerodynamic, control of detached flows is an essential issue. Such a control can serve to reduce noise produced by airplanes, or improve their aerodynamic performances. This work aims at developing tools to produce real time prediction of turbulent velocity fields from a small number of punctual sensors. After a literature review focused on a popular reconstruction method in fluid mechanics, the Stochastic Estimation (SE), the first step was to evaluate its overall prediction performances on several turbulent flows of gradual complexity. The accuracy of the SE being very limited in some cases, a deeper characterization of the method was performed. The filtering effect of the SE in terms of spatial and temporal content was particularly highlighted. This characterization pointed out the strong influence of the sensor locations on the estimation quality. Therefore, a sensor location optimization algorithm was proposed and extended to the choice of time delays when using Multi-Time-Delay SE. While using optimized locations for the sensors hold some accuracy improvements, they were still insufficient for some test cases. The opportunity to use a data assimilation method, the Kalman filter that combines a dynamic model of the flow with sensor information, was investigated. For some cases, the results were promising and the Kalman filter outperforms all SE methods.

Ce travail porte sur l’étude des structures cohérentes dans une couche limite de plaque plane à hauts nombres de Reynolds (Reθ=9830 et Reθ=19660). L'estimation Stochastique Linéaire est utilisée pour reconstruire un champ de vitesses résolu en espace et en temps à partir des mesures aux fils chauds à 30 KHz et des mesures PIV à 4 Hz. Une base de données DNS d’un écoulement de canal turbulent a été utilisée pour valider la procédure de reconstruction. Le champ de vitesse reconstruit est comparé à un champ de référence extrait de la DNS avec la visualisation des contours du champ de vitesse, l’analyse spectrale, les corrélations, etc. Par ailleurs, une analyse statistique est réalisée sur le champ de PIV originale, les données issues des fils chauds et celles reconstruites. Les résultats obtenus sont comparés à ceux de Carlier et Stanislas (2005) qui servent de référence. Des algorithmes ont été développés pour extraire les structures cohérentes du champ reconstruit. Les régions de vitesse uniforme sont caractérisées avec leur diamètre hydraulique, leur durée de vie et leur contribution aux tenseurs de Reynolds. Pour les tourbillons, on leur associe un rayon, une circulation et une vorticité en plus de leur durée de vie et leur nombre calculé à une distance fixe de la paroi. L’organisation spatiale des structures est étudiée avec la corrélation de leurs fonctions indicatives. Le modèle simplifié à grandes échelles qui en découle est comparé à ceux qui existent dans la littérature / This study lies in the context of large scale coherent structures (uniform momentum regions and vortical motions) investigation in a near wall turbulent boundary layer at high Reynolds numbers (Reθ=9830 and Reθ=19660).   With a Linear Stochastic Estimation procedure based on correlations computation, a full time-resolved 3 component field is reconstructed at high frequency from stereo-PIV at 4 Hz and hot wire data at 30 kHz . A DNS database of turbulent channel flow was used to validate the reconstruction method. To evaluate the quality of the method, reconstructed velocity fluctuations are compared to refence ones extracted directly from the DNS database.  Furthermore,  a statistical analysis is performed on HWA, PIV and LSE velocity fields. The results obtained are compared to those from Carlier and Stanislas (2005). Algorithms were developed to extract coherent structures from the reconstructed field. Uniform momentum regions are characterized with their mean hydraulic diameter in the YZ plane, their life time and their contribution to Reynolds stresses. The vortical motions are characterized by their position, radius, circulation and vorticity in addition to their life time and their number computed at a fixed position from the wall. The spatial organization of the structures was investigated through a correlation of their respective indicative functions in the spanwise direction . The simplified large scale model that arised is compared to the ones in the literature

Turbulent wakes generated from an aircraft or submarine vehicles has been of main interest to researchers due to the broad band noise associated with such wakes. One such case is the noise generated by spiral vortices shed of from one blade interacting with another oncoming blade of helicopter rotor. Consequently, researchers have been trying to understand the basic physics and evolution of such wakes. Although there has been numerous studies done on plane wakes, there has been little research being done on laterally curved wakes. Single and two-point velocity measurements were taken on a plane and laterally curved turbulent wakes to understand the evolution and effect of lateral curvature into the far wake region. The analyses provide useful information in modeling curved or spiral wakes such as turbulence field surrounding tip vortices shed from a wing. In order to achieve our objectives, the Virginia Tech 3’ x 2’ subsonic wind tunnel was used to take velocity measurements of toroidal ring model and a straight cylinder as a control case. Velocity measurements were done using four sensor hot-wire anemometers, to obtain all mean velocity, Reynolds stress, triple product components of the turbulence field. Single point, spectra and two-point measurements of the wakes were performed throughout the development into the far wake region. The single point results reveal the universality of the mean axial velocity, however the Reynolds stresses and triple products were not universal illustrating that the turbulence field has its own length and velocity scales different from that of the mean flow. The effect of lateral curvature is mainly evidenced in the early development of the curved ring wake. The turbulent energy budget reveals similar trend for both wakes and plane wake achieves approximate equilibrium. The spectra result reveals for the plane wake that self-preservation is achieved for all scales of motion, while the ring wake does not achieve such a state. While the longitudinal correlations of both wakes are similar in form, in general difference in form and orientation prevailed over all indicating the difference in the turbulent structure of both wakes. Linear stochastic estimation reveals the presence of spanwise and double-roller eddy structures in the plane wake and only spanwise eddies were detected for the ring wake. / Master of Science