Surface Pressure Fluctuations in Separated-Reattached Flows Behind Notched Spoilers

Notched spoilers may be used to suppress flow-induced cavity resonance in vehicles with open sunroofs or side windows. The notches are believed to generate streamwise vortices that break down the structure of the leading edge cross-stream vortices predominantly responsible for the cavity excitation. The objectives of the present study were to gain a better understanding of the buffeting suppression mechanisms associated with notched spoilers, and to gather data for computational model verification. To this end, experiments were performed to characterize the surface pressure field downstream of straight and notched spoilers mounted on a rigid wall to observe the effects of the notches on the static and dynamic wall pressure. Detailed flow velocity measurements were made using hot-wire anemometry. The results indicated that the presence of notches on the spoiler reduces drag, and thus tends to move the flow reattachment location closer to the spoiler. The notches cause a decrease in the coherence of the wall pressure field, and induce a monotonic spanwise phase lag distribution at low frequencies typical of flow induced buffeting. The latter effects could be in part responsible for buffeting reduction, although further work is needed to clarify the exact mechanisms through additional experiments on actual cavity flows.