Comparison of unsteady pressure fields on turrets with different surface features using pressure-sensitive paint

Spatially temporally resolved unsteady pressure fields on a surface of a hemisphere-on-cylinder turret with either a flat or a conformal window with realistic features such as gaps and “smile” cutouts were characterized using fast-response pressure-sensitive paint at M = 0.33 for several window viewing angles. Various statistical properties of pressure fields were computed, and geometry effects on the unsteady pressure fields were analyzed and discussed. Proper orthogonal decomposition was also used to extract dominant pressure modes and corresponding temporal coefficients and to analyze and compare instantaneous pressure structures for different turret geometric features and the window viewing angles. An unsteady separation off the turret and a recirculation region downstream of the turret were identified as dominant sources of the unsteady pressure. It was found that while all geometric features affected the unsteady pressure field, the “smiles,” positioned spanwise-symmetrically on both sides of the turret, were the leading cause of these changes, followed by the looking forward flat window. The gaps, the side- and the back-looking flat window introduced only small local changes.