Evaluation of Dynamic Pressure-Sensitive Paint for Improved Analysis of Cavity Flows and CFD Validation

Abstract

This study has investigated the use of Dynamic Pressure-Sensitive Paint (DPSP) to analyse the complex multi-dimensional flow-field within a generic small-scale rectangular planform cavity. The analysis and understanding of cavity flows have received renewed interest due to the low-observability requirements for modern military aircraft and Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs). This study has demonstrated the use of DPSP to provide unsteady pressure data, from the full model surface coverage of a model-scale cavity ceiling in a transonic Mach number range of 0.70 ≤ M ≤ 0.95. These results were compared against traditional point transducer measurements and also compared with numerical simulations of the cavity flow-field. These comparisons demonstrate that DPSP represents a very useful tool for the validation of numerical data as well as for flow-diagnostic investigations, where point measurements from transducers would provide spatially limited data. Further analysis of the transducer and DPSP data has also demonstrated temporal intermittency of the widely known Rossiter modes within the cavity acoustic signature. This instability has been previously linked to mode switching and a breakdown in the modal generation feedback process within the cavity flowfield.