Dynamics and instability of a vortex ring impinging on a wall were investigated by means of large eddy simulation for two vortex core thicknesses corresponding to thin and thick vortex rings. Various fundamental mechanisms dictating the flow behaviors, such as evolution of vortical structures, formation of vortices wrapping around vortex rings, instability and breakdown of vortex rings, and transition from laminar to turbulent state, have been studied systematically. The evolution of vortical structures is elucidated and the formation of the loop-like and hair-pin vortices wrapping around the vortex rings (called briefly wrapping vortices) is clarified. Analysis of the enstrophy of wrapping vortices and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) in flow field indicates that the formation and evolution of wrapping vortices are closely associated with the flow transition to turbulent state. It is found that the temporal development of wrapping vortices and the growth rate of axial flow generated around the circumference of the core region for the thin ring are faster than those for the thick ring. The azimuthal instabilities of primary and secondary vortex rings are analyzed and the development of modal energies is investigated to reveal the flow transition to turbulent state. The modal energy decay follows a characteristic –5/3 power law, indicating that the vortical flow has become turbulence. Moreover, it is identified that the TKE with a major contribution of the azimuthal component is mainly distributed in the core region of vortex rings. The results obtained in this study provide physical insight of the mechanisms relevant to the vortical flow evolution from laminar to turbulent state.

The purpose of this study is to enhance the stability properties of our recently-developed numerical method [D. Kamensky, M.-C. Hsu, D. Schillinger, J.A. Evans, A. Aggarwal, Y. Bazilevs, M.S. Sacks, T.J.R. Hughes, “An immersogeometric variational framework for fluid-structure interaction: Application to bioprosthetic heart valves”, Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg., 284 (2015) 1005–1053] for immersing spline-based representations of shell structures into unsteady viscous incompressible flows. In the cited work, we formulated the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) problem using an augmented Lagrangian to enforce kinematic constraints. We discretized this Lagrangian as a set of collocated constraints, at quadrature points of the surface integration rule for the immersed interface. Because the density of quadrature points is not controlled relative to the fluid discretization, the resulting semi-discrete problem may be over-constrained. Semi-implicit time integration circumvents this difficulty in the fully-discrete scheme. If this time-stepping algorithm is applied to fluid-structure systems that approach steady solutions, though, we find that spatially-oscillating modes of the Lagrange multiplier field can grow over time. In the present work, we stabilize the semi-implicit integration scheme to prevent potential divergence of the multiplier field as time goes to infinity. This stabilized time integration may also be applied in pseudo-time within each time step, giving rise to a fully implicit solution method. We discuss the theoretical implications of this stabilization scheme for several simplified model problems, then demonstrate its practical efficacy through numerical examples.

The non-equilibrium chemical reacting combustion flows of a proposed long slender scramjet system were numerically studied by solving the turbulent Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. The Spalart-Allmaras one equation turbulence model is used which produces better results for near wall and boundary layer flow field problems. The lower-upper symmetric Gauss-Seidel implicit scheme, which enables results converge efficiently under steady state condition, is combined with the weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) scheme to yield an accurate simulation tool for scramjet combustion flow field analysis. Using the WENO schemes high-order accuracy and its non-oscillatory solution at flow discontinuities, better resolution of the hypersonic flow problems involving complex shock-shock/shock-boundary layer interactions inside the flow path, can be achieved. Two types of scramjet combustor with cavity-based and strut-based fuel injector were considered as the testing models. The flow characteristics with and without combustion reactions of the two types combustor model were studied with a transient hydrogen/oxygen combustion model. The detailed results of aerodynamic data are obtained and discussed, moreover, the combustion properties of varying the equivalent ratio of hydrogen, including the concentration of reacting species, hydrogen and oxygen, and the reacting products, water, are demonstrated to study the combustion process and performance of the combustor. The comparisons of flow field structures, pressure on wall and velocity profiles between the experimental data and the solutions of the present algorithms, showed qualitatively as well as the quantitatively in good agreement, and validated the adequacy of the present simulation tool for hypersonic scramjet reacting flow analysis.