Nonlinear Mode Interactions in the Wake of a Medium Height Roughness Element

Abstract

The present study is devoted to nonlinear (resonant) mode interactions in the wake of a medium height, cylindrical roughness element, which is placed in a laminar, airfoil boundary layer. The roughness element causes a considerable mean flow distortion in the near wake centerline region and two counter-rotating vortex pairs arise in the outer spanwise domain. In the streamwise evolution the mean flow stabilizes and a spanwise uniform flow is recovered in the far wake. Upstream of the roughness controlled, low-amplitude Tollmien-Schlichting (TS) wave modes are excited in the upper branch unstable region. The interference of the excited, 2D fundamental modes with the roughness results in the excitation of oblique modes in a broad spanwise wave number range. Nonlinear interactions in-between the (oblique) fundamental modes in the destabilized near wake lead to the generation of primary, low-frequency modes at the difference frequencies of the fundamental modes, before the fundamental modes can recover linear stability characteristics in the far wake. In contrast, the primary, subharmonic-type modes experience a nonlinear growth, which is a result of frequency and spanwise wave number detuned resonant mode interactions with the 2D fundamental modes. The resonant growth of the primary interaction modes initiates a symmetrization of the spectrum in the low-frequency, subharmonic range. That is, symmetric subharmonic-type (secondary) modes are resonantly amplified in the far wake. Therefore, although the fundamental modes recover linear stability characteristics with the stabilization of the mean flow, resonant mode interactions in the low-frequency, subharmonic range initiate the onset of boundary layer transition in the far wake of the medium height roughness element.