Experimental investigation of the flow instability near the attachment-line boundary layer on a yawed cylinder

The behavior of small disturbances in a 3-D laminar boundary layer on a yawed cylinder was experimentally investigated. This setup simulates the flow around the leading edge of swept wings. Since multiple instability modes appear near the attachment-line region, a point-source disturbance was artificially introduced to separate these modes. Amplitude and phase distributions of the disturbances originating from the point source were measured using a hotwire probe near the attachment-line flow to test existing theoretical predictions. Hotwire measurements show that two instability modes definitely coexist and overlap in the middle portion of the wedge-shaped region developing downstream of the point source. Decomposition by 2-D fast Fourier transform (FFT) analysis enables us to separate one oblique wave from the other. One of the oblique waves belongs to the cross-flow instability mode, which travels to the attachment line and grows even at Reynolds numbers that are slightly lower than the critical Reynolds number for the attachment-line instability. The origin of the other mode is not identifiable, because it has peculiar characteristics different from both the streamline-curvature instability mode and the cross-flow instability mode. This mode decays in the downstream direction for all frequencies examined. By investigating the spatial characteristics of the small disturbance, the critical Reynolds number for cross-flow instability was successfully determined in the off-attachment-line region. The value, R-c = 543, was lower than the critical Reynolds number of R-c = 583 for the attachment-line flow. Furthermore, the critical frequency and wavenumber were in good agreement with existing predictions based on linear stability theory.