Hong-il Choi
The Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology, vol. 23, no. 6, pp.1702-1709, 2009

Abstract : Flight vehicles such as wheel wells and bomb bays have many cavities. The flow around a cavity is characterized as an unsteady flow because of the formation and dissipation of vortices brought about by the interaction between the free stream shear layer and the internal flow of the cavity. The resonance phenomena can damage the structures around the cavity and negatively affect the aerodynamic performance and stability of the vehicle. In this study, a numerical analysis was performed for the cavity flows using the unsteady compressible three-dimensional Reynolds-Averaged Navier- Stokes (RANS) equation with Wilcox's turbulence model. The Message Passing Interface (MPI) parallelized code was used for the calculations by PC-cluster. The cavity has aspect ratios (L/D) of 2.5 ~ 7.5 with width ratios (W/D) of 2 ~ 4. The Mach and Reynolds numbers are 0.4 ~ 0.6 and 1.6×106, respectively. The occurrence of oscillation is observed in the "shear layer and transient mode" with a feedback mechanism. Based on the Sound Pressure Level (SPL) analysis of the pressure variation at the cavity trailing edge, the dominant frequencies are analyzed and compared with the results of Rossiter's formula. The dominant frequencies are very similar to the result of Rossiter's formula and other experimental data in the low aspect ratio cavity (L/D = ~ 4.5). In the large aspect ratio cavity, however, there are other low dominant frequencies due to the leading edge shear layer with the dominant frequencies of the feedback mechanism. The characteristics of the acoustic wave propagation are analyzed using the Correlation of Pressure Distribution (CPD).

Keyword : Unsteady subsonic flow; k −ω Turbulence model; Three dimensional cavity flow; Sound pressure level; Correlation of