Francisco Gómez

An approach to designing passive devices for control of unsteady flows is presented. The method requires only snapshots of the flow to be controlled as inputs. A temporal correlation based on proper orthogonal decomposition of both fluctuating velocity and nonlinear forcing serves to identify the spatial locations in which the forcing drives the different unsteady flow features. The installation of a passive device in these spatial locations inhibits the fluctuating motion. The potential of the methodology is demonstrated via the suppression of vortex shedding in flow past a square cylinder, paving the way to the control of more complex flows using passive devices. Connections in agreement with previous studies targeting the same flow using different passive flow control strategies are provided.

A novel method to estimate unsteady aerodynamic force coefficients from pointwise velocity measurements is presented. As opposed to other existing methodologies, time-resolved full velocity fields are not required. The methodology is based on a resolvent-based reduced-order model which requires the mean flow to obtain physical flow structures and pointwise measurement to calibrate their amplitudes. A computationally affordable time-stepping methodology to obtain resolvent modes in non-trivial flow domains is introduced and compared with previous existing matrix-free and matrix-forming strategies. The technique is applied to the unsteady flow around an inclined square cylinder at low Reynolds number. The potential of the methodology is demonstrated through good agreement between the fluctuating pressure distribution on the cylinder and the temporal evolution of the unsteady lift and drag coefficients predicted by the model and those computed by direct numerical simulation.

A novel method to estimate unsteady aerodynamic force coefficients from pointwise velocity measurements is presented. The methodology is based on a resolvent-based reduced-order model which requires the mean flow to obtain physical flow structures and pointwise measurement to calibrate their amplitudes. A computationally-affordable time-stepping methodology to obtain resolvent modes in non-trivial flow domains is introduced and compared to previous existing matrix-free and matrix-forming strategies. The technique is applied to the unsteady flow around an inclined square cylinder at low Reynolds number. The potential of the methodology is demonstrated through good agreement between the fluctuating pressure distribution on the cylinder and the temporal evolution of the unsteady lift and drag coefficients predicted by the model and those computed by direct numerical simulation.

A novel reduced-order model for nonlinear flows is presented. The model arises from a resolvent decomposition in which the nonlinear advection terms of the Navier-Stokes equation are considered as the input to a linear system in Fourier space. Results show that Taylor-G\"ortler-like vortices can be represented from a low-order resolvent decomposition of a nonlinear lid-driven cavity flow. The present approach provides an approximation of the fluctuating velocity given the time-mean and the time history of a single velocity probe.

A study of the the main features of low- and high amplitude steady streamwise wall transpiration applied to pipe flow is presented. The effect of the two transpiration parameters, amplitude and wavenumber, on the flow have been investigated by means of direct numerical simulation at a moderate turbulent Reynolds number. The behaviour of the three identified mechanisms that act in the flow: modification of Reynolds shear stress, steady streaming and generation of non-zero mean streamwise gradients, have been linked to the transpiration parameters. The observed trends have permitted the identification of wall transpiration configurations able to reduce or increase the overall flow rate in -36.1% and 19.3% respectively. A resolvent analysis has been carried out to obtain a description of the reorganization of the flow structures induced by the transpiration.

A novel reduced-order model for time-varying nonlinear flows arising from a resolvent decomposition based on the time-mean flow is proposed. The inputs required for the model are the mean-flow field and a small set of velocity time-series data obtained at isolated measurement points, which are used to fix relevant frequencies, amplitudes and phases of a limited number of resolvent modes that, together with the mean flow, constitute the reduced-order model. The technique is applied to derive a model for the unsteady three-dimensional flow in a lid-driven cavity at a Reynolds number of 1200 that is based on the two-dimensional mean flow, three resolvent modes selected at the most active spanwise wavenumber, and either one or two velocity probe signals. The least-squares full-field error of the reconstructed velocity obtained using the model and two point velocity probes is of the order of 5 % of the lid velocity, and the dynamical behaviour of the reconstructed flow is qualitatively similar to that of the complete flow.