An experimental study to determine the effects of riblets on the performance of the supersonic through-flow fan (STF) cascade blades was performed. The two-dimensional cascade was tested in the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University intermittent wind tunnel facility, where the Mach and Reynolds (based on chord) numbers were 2.36 and 4.8 x 10⁶ , respectively. Three different V-grooved riblet heights were tested on the blades: 0.023, 0.033, and 0.051 mm. Riblet testing were conducted at design incidence as well as at off-design conditions (incidence angles: +5, -10 deg). The riblet effect on the performance of the STF blades was determined by measuring the total pressure profile downstream of the cascade and integrating this total pressure to obtain an overall mass-averaged loss coefficient. The riblet loss coefficient was compared with the loss coefficient of a control test case where an equivalent thickness of smooth material is applied to the blades. Results show that, at the design incidence, the 0.033 mm height riblets provided the optimal benefit, with a reduction of 8.5% in the loss coefficient compared to the control case. Smaller effects were measured at the off-design conditions. Shadowgraph pictures were taken to study the effect of riblets on the turbulent transition location on the blades surfaces. At design incidence, the shadowgraphs revealed that the optimum height rib lets delayed the transition location on the suction surface of the blades. Therefore, it was concluded that for the 0.033 mm height riblets the decrease in the cascade's loss coefficient was the result of delayed transition in addition to a decrease in turbulent viscous losses. A numerical simulation was conducted to investigate both rib let effects on the STF blades. The numerical study showed that only the combination of the two riblet effects was able to produce a decrease in loss coefficient that was observed experimentally. Results from the numerical study indicate, that at design incidence, 2/3 of the rib let benefit is attributed to the delayed transition effect on the blades with the other 1/3 resulting from a decrease in turbulent viscous losses. / Ph. D.

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Since their conception in the 1960s, panel codes have remained a critical tool in the design and development of air vehicles. With continued advancement in computational technologies, today's codes are able to solve flow fields around arbitrary bodies more quickly and with higher fidelity than those that preceded them. Panel codes prove most useful during the conceptual design phase of an air vehicle, allowing engineers to iterate designs, and generate full solutions of the flow field around a vehicle in a matter of seconds to minutes instead of hours to days using traditional CFD methods. There have been relatively few panel codes with the capacity to solve supersonic flow fields, and there has been little recently published work done to improve upon them. This work implements supersonic potential flow methods into Cal Poly’s open source panel code, CPanel. CPanel was originally developed to solve steady, subsonic flows utilizing constant strength source and doublet panels to define the geometry, and an unstructured geometry discretization; it was later extended to include viscous vortex particle wakes and transient modeling. In this thesis, a higher-order method is implemented in CPanel for use in solving linearized supersonic flows, where a higher-order method is one that utilizes at least one singularity element whose order is higher than constant. CPanel results are verified against analytical solutions, such as the Taylor-Maccoll solution for supersonic conical flows and 2D shock-expansion theory, and the PANAIR and MARCAP supersonic panel codes. Results correlate well with the analytical solutions, and show strong agreement with the other codes.

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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.

A supersonic ejector is used to pump a secondary gas using a supersonic primary gas flow by augmentation of momentum and energy in a variable area duct. The internal compressible flow through an ejector has many complex gas dynamic features, like compressible shear layers and associated shock interactions. In many practical applications, ejectors are operated in the choked flow regimes where higher operating pressure ratios and mass flow rates are encountered. On the other hand, rather low entrainment and subsonic secondary flow dynamics (referred as the mixed regime of operation) dominate the dilution and purging applications of ejectors. The fundamental understanding of the flow dynamics associated with gaseous mixing process in the ejector especially in the mixed operational regime is still unclear. Obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the flow through a supersonic ejector in the mixed regime through experimental investigations is the prime focus of the present study. A new supersonic ejector test facility is designed, fabricated and established in the laboratory during the course of this study. The effects of using different gases in the secondary flow have been investigated. Two novel methods to improve the ejector by enhancing mixing are also implemented. Optical diagnostic tools (Time-resolved Schlieren and laser scattering) and wall static pressure measurements are used to investigate the dynamics of mixing process inside the ejector. State of the art image processing codes are developed to determine the length in the ejector for which the primary and the secondary flows are separate, referred here as the non-mixed length from the results of the flow visualization studies. Exhaustive experiments are carried out on the two dimensional rectangular supersonic ejector by varying the mass flow rates of primary and secondary flows, primary stagnation pressure, for two locations of the nozzle in the ejector. The non-mixed length determined from quantitative flow visualization tools is found to lie within 4.5 to 5.2 times the height of the duct (20 mm). The non-mixed flow length determined from flow visualization studies corroborates well with the wall static pressure measurements. A significant reduction of non-mixed length of about 46.7% is caused by shock wave-boundary layer interactions in the supersonic nozzle at over-expanded conditions. Further, the effects of differences in molecular weight and ratio of specific heats on the performance are also studied using cylindrical supersonic ejector at low entrainment ratios (0.008 to 0.06). In these studies air is used as the primary fluid while argon and helium are used in the secondary flow segment of the ejector. The results indicate that Argon has better entrainment characteristics compared to helium. Two novel supersonic nozzles (the tip rig nozzle and Elliptic Sharp Tipped Shallow lobed nozzle) are also devel- oped to enhance mixing in the ejector. About 30% enhancement of entrainment ratio is observed with the newly designed nozzle geometries. Illustrative numerical simulations are also carried out to complement the experimental studies.