Transient wall-jet flowing over a circular cylinder

The transient flow of a two-dimensional wall-jet over a circular cylinder, following rapid initiation and termination, was investigated experimentally. Unsteady surface pressures and unsteady pressure-sensitive paint were used to gain a basic understanding of the flow physics. Jet initiation produced a starting vortex, upstream of which the Coandă flow developed, producing a large low-pressure peak. Immediately following jet termination, the pressure increased over the first quarter of the circumference, while the downstream separation region remained virtually unaffected. Simplifying analyses and dimensional arguments were used to show that the timescales characterizing the transient development of the integrated loads depend only on the square of the slot height and the kinematic viscosity and are thus independent of the jet velocity. Following jet initiation, the resulting loads varied according to a linear transient model, while small nonlinearities were observed following jet termination. Unsteady pressure-sensitive paint showed that the starting jet emerges from the slot in a two-dimensional manner and that streamwise streaks, identified as Görtler vortices, form well before the flow reaches steady state. During termination, the streamwise structures dissipate downstream initially, with the dissipation propagating upstream.