Experimental analysis of transonic buffet on a 3D swept wing using fast-response pressure-sensitive paint

Transonic buffeting phenomena on a three-dimensional swept wing were experimentally analyzed using a fast-response pressure-sensitive paint (PSP). The experiment was conducted using an 80%-scaled NASA Common Research Model in the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) 2 m × 2 m Transonic Wind Tunnel at a Mach number of 0.85 and a chord Reynolds number of 1.54 × 10⁶. The angle of attack was varied between 2.82° and 6.52°. The calculation of root-mean-square (RMS) pressure fluctuations and spectral analysis were performed on measured unsteady PSP images to analyze the phenomena under off-design buffet conditions. We found that two types of shock behavior exist. The first is a shock oscillation characterized by the presence of “buffet cells” formed at a bump Strouhal number St of 0.3–0.5, which is observed under all off-design conditions. This phenomenon arises at the mid-span wing and is propagated spanwise from inboard to outboard. The other is a large spatial amplitude shock oscillation characterized by low-frequency broadband components at St < 0.1, which appears at higher angles of attack (α ≥ 6.0°) and behaves more like two-dimensional buffet. The transition between these two shock behaviors correlates well with the rapid increase of the wing-root strain fluctuation RMS.