Investigation of the three-dimensional turbulent near-wake structure past a flat plate by tomographic PIV at high Reynolds number

This paper reports an experimental investigation of the high-Reynolds number turbulent flow past a thin flat plate with sharp untapered edges, by means of tomographic PIV. The experiments, carried out in the S4 wind tunnel of IMFT, have quantified the three-dimensional coherent vortex structures, by means of 3-D Proper Orthogonal Decomposition and reconstruction. The interaction of the most energetic coherent structures with the random turbulence is discussed. Furthermore, Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD), analysis allowed evaluation of three-dimensional phase-averaged dynamics that quantified the vortex shedding mechanism as well as the influence of higher modes associated with the finer-scale turbulence.