Publications Details
BiGlobal Secondary Instabilities of Roughness-Induced Transient Growth
Monschke, Jason A.; White, Edward B.
Roughness-induced transient disturbances distort laminar boundary layers and can lead to premature transition if the roughness is of sufficient height and shape. If transition does occur, it does so through a high-frequency "secondary" instability of the roughness wake. A BiGlobal secondaryinstability code has been developed to solve the stability problem downstream of roughness. The code implements multiple solvers for incompressible/compressible, inviscid/viscous, and temporal/spatial stability. High-order finite differences, sparse matrix linear algebra, LU decomposition, and Arnoldi iterations are used to solve the resulting generalized eigenvalue problem. The code has been used to evaluate the stability properties of experimental roughness-induced transient growth on a flat-plate at low-speed and a slightly blunted cone at M∞= 6. The resulting mode shapes, growth rates, and spatial N-factors show excellent agreement with experimental data. The viscous mode shapes show the best agreement with the experimental disturbance profiles. Yet, execution time can be reduced by an order-of-magnitude by using the inviscid solvers with only modest differences in growth rates.