Dynamic stall of a hydrofoil with tubercles in surface gravity waves

TL;DR

This study experimentally examines how surface gravity waves induce dynamic stall on a hydrofoil and investigates the effect of bio-inspired tubercle modifications on flow behavior and force fluctuations, providing new insights into unsteady flow control.

Contribution

It is the first detailed experimental analysis of tubercle effects on dynamic stall in unsteady hydrofoil-wave interactions, including force measurements and flow visualization.

Findings

Tubercles qualitatively modify flow during dynamic stall.

Drag fluctuations are significantly reduced by tubercles.

Lift is not strongly affected by tubercle geometry.

Abstract

The interaction of an object with an unsteady flow is non-trivial and is still far from being fully understood. When an airfoil or hydrofoil, for example, undergoes time-dependent motion, nonlinear flow phenomena such as dynamic stall can emerge. The present work experimentally investigates the interaction between a hydrofoil and surface gravity waves. The waves impose periodic fluctuations of the velocity magnitude and orientation, causing a steadily translating hydrofoil to be susceptible to dynamic stall at large wave forcing amplitudes. Simultaneous measurement of both the forces acting on the hydrofoil and the flow around it by means of particle image velocimetry (PIV) are performed, to properly characterise the hydrofoil-wave interaction. In an attempt at alleviating the impact of the flow unsteadiness via passive flow control, a bio-inspired tubercle geometry is applied along the hydrofoil leading edge. This geometry is known to delay stall in steady cases but has scarcely been studied in unsteady flow conditions. The vortex structures associated with dynamic stall are identified, and their trajectories, dimension, and strength characterised. This analysis is performed for both straight- and tubercled-leading-edge geometries, with tubercles found to qualitatively modify the flow behaviour during dynamic stall. Contrary to previous studies, direct measurements of lift do not evidence any strong modification by tubercles. Drag-driven horizontal force fluctuations, however, which have not previously been measured in this context, are found to be strongly attenuated. This decrease is quantified, and a physical model based on the flow observations is finally proposed.