The effect of three-dimensional staggered circular cavities on a zero-pressure gradient incompressible turbulent boundary layer was studied. Two key parameters were varied, being the ratio of the diameter, d, to the depth, h, of the cavity, d/h and the Reynolds number based on the diameter of the cavity, R d. Velocity profile measurements showed that for the cases of d/h > 1 an increase in skin friction drag was experienced with respect to a smooth surface, but for d/h ≤ 1 the drag increment was almost negligible and in some cases it was lower than that of a smooth surface by up to 10%. Measurements along the spanwise plane showed the presence of organised transverse velocity components which bear some resemblance with the flow over riblets. The skin friction drag appears to be a strong function of R d , where for R d > 5500 a drag increment is experienced which could potentially be due to shear layer breakdown and more production of turbulence.

The peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) is known for its extremely high speeds during hunting dives or stoop. Here we demonstrate that the superior manoeuvrability of peregrine falcons during stoop is attributed to vortex-dominated flow promoted by their morphology, in the M-shape configuration adopted towards the end of dive. Both experiments and simulations on life-size models, derived from field observations, revealed the presence of vortices emanating from the frontal and dorsal region due to a strong spanwise flow promoted by the forward sweep of the radiale. These vortices enhance mixing for flow reattachment towards the tail. The stronger wing and tail vortices provide extra aerodynamic forces through vortex-induced lift for pitch and roll control. A vortex pair with a sense of rotation opposite to that from conventional planar wings interacts with the main wings vortex to reduce induced drag, which would otherwise decelerate the bird significantly during pull-out. These findings could help in improving aircraft performance and wing suits for human flights.

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The primary objective of the present study was to develop a quantitative schlieren-imaging technique that can be used to study the dynamics of instability waves. The technique was initially validated by optically capturing a controlled acoustic wave generated by a compression driver and excellent agreement was obtained with microphone measurements. An underexpanded jet was considered as an ideal test case due to the complexity and multitude of instability mechanism. Further analysis of the underexpanded jet demonstrated that this technique can be used to capture the very high frequency mode related to the phenomenon of screech.

This work is an experimental investigation of the dynamics of the laminar separation bubbles, which are typically present on the suction side of lifting surfaces at a large angle of attack. The separation bubble was generated on a flat plate by an adverse pressure gradient induced by The adverse pressure gradient was generated by using an inverted wing with a NACA 64 3-618 airfoil mounted above the flat plate. Using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), a parametric study of the effect of the upstream flow velocity and the induced pressure gradient on the mean flow topology and the unsteady behavior of the separation bubble was carried out in the low-speed water tunnel of the Hydrodynamics Laboratory at the University of Arizona. The topology of the laminar separation bubble, and in particular the unsteady flow dynamics, were found to be strongly dependent on these parameters. For certain conditions, strong vortex shedding near the reattachment region of the bubble was observed, which is a characterisc behavior of short bubbles. High-resolution spatio-temporal PIV measurements were made to analyze the formation and breakdown of these flow structures. The frequency of vortex shedding was determined from Fourier analysis of the time series of the velocity fluctuations. The non-dimensionalised frequencies were found to be nearly independent of the Reynolds number for the range of Reynolds numbers investigated here.