Flow-separation control with porous medium

 The porous medium is seen to weaken the shock system (lambda shock formation: shown on the main page) and reduce adverse pressure gradients.  The application of this concept has the potential to reduce fuel consumption in passenger aircraft. 

We are interested in performing CFD and investigation of flow-separation control with a porous medium in 

• transonic flow past wings and

• high-speed (supersonic/hypersonic) intakes

The figure below shows  Mach 0.8 flow past a DFVLR-R4 airfoil with (R) and without (L) the presence of a porous region. With the use of a porous layer that replaces a part of the upper layer of the airfoil, the separation bubble is severely reduced in size. More investigations will  be done for determining the physics of the flow and finding an optimum porosity level. 

Positions/Openings: 1 M.S, 1 Ph.D.