Wake Dynamics of Complex Turning Vanes Using Time-Resolved Particle Image Velocimetry Measurements

Abstract

The use of turning vanes spans multiple engineering disciplines such as aerospace, ocean, and biomedical to effectively turn an otherwise uniform flowfield and achieve desired downstream flow angles. The presented work investigates the wake dynamics generated by sets of complex turning vanes which contained nonaxisymmetric geometries, spanwise variations in turning angle, and multiple vane junctions. Time-resolved particle image velocimetry (TR-PIV) measurements were performed to collect three-component velocity data downstream of the vane pack geometries. As the vanes contained blunt trailing edges (TEs), large-scale periodic structures (von Kármán vortices) dominated the unsteady wakes. Two postprocessing methods, proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD), were employed to extract the wake energy or enstrophy content, corresponding spatial modes, and associated frequencies. This was completed for various parameters such as Reynolds number, vane turning angle, and vane trailing edge thickness. Spatial POD analyses showed that zero-turning vanes contained similar dynamics to that of a circular cylinder, and the total wake energy distributions were affected by freestream velocity. A spectral POD analysis in the wake of vane junctions found that the junction flow contained significant coherent content and gave some insight into the mean flow. Finally, vane parameters such as turning angle and TE thickness were found to play a large role in modifying the enstrophy content of the large-scale shedding modes.