Influence of adaptive control on vortex-driven instabilities in a scaled model of solid propellant motors

Aeroacoustic instabilities occur in many applications of technological interest and have undesirable effects on the steady operation of the system. Passive and active means are sought to reduce the level of oscillation and eliminate the instability. In the case of segmented solid rocket motors, observations indicate that low-frequency oscillations are generated by a coupling between vortex shedding in shear regions established in the flow and the acoustic eigenmodes of the system. This process is investigated in this article on a model-scale configuration representing the geometry of the motor. An active control loop is exploited to obtain resonant and non-resonant conditions for the same operating point. Adaptive techniques are used to stabilize the flow and the experiment serves as a testbed for active control. It is shown that an adaptive system may be applied to essentially suppress the pressure oscillations. The instability mechanism is then studied by analyzing the flow field with particle image velocimetry. It is found that control noticeably modifies the mean flow structure. Detailed studies of the vortex pattern in the shedding region indicate that the concentrated vorticity and the corresponding circulation values remain in the same range but that vorticity is shed more randomly when the resonance is eliminated by the controller. This indicates that control is achieved by reducing the level of organization in the vortex pattern. Under resonant conditions the level of pressure fluctuations results from coherent interactions between vortices and the downstream nozzle. This process feeds energy in one of the acoustic modes of the system enhancing the pressure level. It is made less effective by the control loop.