Publications Details

Measurement of fluctuating wall pressures beneath a supersonic turbulent boundary layer

Beresh, Steven J.; Henfling, John F.; Spillers, Russell

Wind tunnel experiments up to Mach 3 have provided fluctuating wall pressure spectra beneath a supersonic turbulent boundary layer to frequencies reaching 400 kHz to help reconcile conflicts in the historical data. Data were acquired using piezoresistive silicon pressure transducers effective at low- and mid-range frequencies, supplemented by piezoelectric quartz sensors to detect high frequency events, and combined into a single curve describing the wall pressure spectrum. Attenuation at high frequencies due to limited spatial resolution was a dominant problem, but the well-known Corcos correction successfully recovered the true amplitude within its range of applicability, revealing the ω-1 dependence for fluctuations within the logarithmic region of the boundary layer. Wind tunnel noise and vibration were removed by a noise cancellation algorithm based upon adaptive filtering, showing the power spectra are essentially flat at low frequency and do not exhibit the theorized ω2 dependence. The integrated pressure fluctuation intensities are appreciably greater than the historical supersonic database when data corrections are applied, but consistent when neglected, suggesting that past experiments may be biased low.