Session: Rising Stars of Mechanical Engineering Celebration & Showcase

Paper Number: 151046

151046 - Interaction of Turbulence With Flexible Surfaces: Coherent Structures and Near-Wall Dynamics 

The objective of this work is to investigate the fundamental mechanisms of the interaction of flexible structures with the near-wall turbulence. Although the structure and dynamics of turbulence interacting with a rigid wall is reasonably well understood, little to nothing is known about the principles of modification of these dynamics by the wall elasticity. This is despite the fact that the applications where such interactions occur are ubiquitous in physics and engineering, ranging from blood flow in human’s arteries, to flexible rods in heat exchangers and thermal reactors, to airplane wings vibrating in flight, to biological and bio-inspired propulsion. Flexible surfaces, due to their potential to alter the structure of turbulence, can also ultimately be used for flow control applications. The proposed research is devoted to a systematic investigation of the problem of a turbulence interaction with flexile walls, via high-fidelity Direct Numerical Simulations, combined with a rigorous analysis based on recent theories of turbulence.

Few previous experimental and numerical studies of turbulence interacting with flexible surfaces have bestowed on the scientific community an incredibly puzzling and somewhat contradictory status quo.  Can compliant walls suppress turbulence? Why the patterns of interaction differ dramatically in different studies? A fundamental understanding that would ultimately lead to answers to these questions is lacking. The presented work attempts to bridge this gap by investigating the role of the wall motion in the modification of the near-wall turbulent cycle. 

This project investigates the interactions between the flexible surfaces and turbulent flows. The analysis is based on the combination of computational fluid dynamics simulations and theory. Surfaces that deform under the influence of fluid forces occur in many practical situations, such as vibrations of aircraft wings, human blood vessels, and compliant coatings. The goal of this project is to develop new theories that help explain how these interactions will change the structure of the flow. A specific focus is on investigation of the mechanisms involved with the interaction between the flexible surfaces and the near-wall turbulence. Particular emphasis is on understanding of 1) how passive and active wall motions alter the near-wall turbulence cycle, 2) whether and why these alterations lead to a turbulence reduction, and 3) what factors are responsible for changing the mode of interaction. The above goals are accomplished via a combination of high-fidelity Direct Numerical Simulations of a coupled fluid-structure interaction problem, and a suite of analysis tools, including a resolvent analysis, and a linear stochastic estimation approach. Resolvent analysis provides a-priori and a-posteriori estimates of the effect of certain flow and material parameters on a likelihood of achieving a desired mode of interaction.

Presenting Author: Yulia Peet Arizona State University

Presenting Author Biography: Yulia Peet is an Associate Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy at Arizona State University, which she joined in Fall 2012. Her Ph.D. degree is in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford (2006), M.S. and B.S. degrees are from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (1999 and 1997). Her previous appointments include a Postdoctoral position at the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris in 2006-2008, and a dual appointment as an NSF Fellow at Northwestern and an Assistant Computational Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory in 2009-2012. Dr. Peet was selected as a Mayo Clinic Alliance Summer Fellow in 2018, and she was a recipient of an NSF CAREER award in 2020. Her research interests include computational methods and high-performance computing, fluid mechanics and turbulence, with applications in aerospace, wind energy, and biological fluid mechanics.

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