Turbulent Pressure-Velocity Measurements in a Fully Developed Concentric Annular Air Flow

Abstract

An experimental study of the fluctuating velocity field and the fluctuating static wall pressure in an annular turbulent air flow system with a radius ratio of 4.314 has been conducted. The study included direct measurements of the mean velocity profile, turbulent velocity field and fluctuating static wall pressure from which the statistical values of the turbulent intensity levels, power spectral densities of the turbulent quantities, and the cross-correlation between the fluctuating static wall pressure and the fluctuating velocity field in the core region of the flow were obtained. The effect of the turbulent core region of the flow on the wall pressure fluctuations was studied by cross-correlating the axial and radial velocity components with the wall pressure fluctuations. A three-sensor, signal subtraction data analysis method using coherence techniques was developed to separate the superimposed local pressure fluctuations and acoustically transmitted noise. This analysis method is shown to adequately isolate the local pressure fluctuation information at each wall of the flow channel. The results of the experimental measurements are compared with existing experimental and numerical information on turbulent annular flow fields and wall pressure statistics. The pressure-velocity correlation indicates that a substantial contribution to the pressure field on the wall of the flow channel is from the turbulent core region outside of the boundary layer. The wall pressure field is shown to be significantly different on the two dissimilar walls. The pressure-velocity correlations show that this difference is due to the geometric difference between the dissimilar volumetric sources which contribute to the wall pressure field. The results of this study show that vibration modeling must incorporate the effects of the flow geometry on the wall pressure statistics, which are used as the driving force for flow-induced vibrations.