Blunt Trailing Edge Shear Wake Development With Turbulent In-Flow Boundary Layers

Experiments are conducted to explore the structural mechanisms involved in the post-separation evolution of a wall-bounded to a free-shear turbulent flow. At the upstream, both the boundary layers are turbulent. Experiments were conducted in a two-stream shear-layer tunnel, under a zero axial pressure gradient shear-wake configuration. A velocity ratio near 2 was explored. Profile data were collected with a single wire probe at various locations downstream of the blunt separation lip. With this set of measurements, mean profile, axial intensity and measures of profile evolution indicate that the predominant shift from turbulent boundary layer to free shear-layer like behavior occurs between the downstream locations x/θ = 13.7 & 27.4, where θ is the upstream momentum deficit thickness on the low-speed stream. The shear wake width is observed to be nominally constant with the downstream position. Axial velocity spectra show that the transition from boundary layer flow to shear flow occurs earlier in high-speed stream when compared to low speed stream. Strouhal number, St_o, of initial vortex rollup based on initial momentum thickness was found to be 0.034, which is in very good agreement with the existing literature. Other measures are in good agreement with linear stability considerations found in the literature.