Investigation of suction for laminar flow control of three-dimensional boundary layers

Direct numerical simulations are employed to investigate the effects of discrete suction orifices at the wall on the disturbance evolution in laminar three-dimensional boundary-layer flows with favourable pressure gradient. Suction panels with many suction orifices can excite unstable crossflow (CF) modes even if the orifice spacing is smaller than the chordwise/spanwise wavelengths of unstable modes, caused by imperfections in the orifice order or suction strength. It has been found that the most unstable steady vortex mode leads to strong CF vortices that invoke turbulence by secondary instability even on the active suction panel. The deliberate excitation and support of stabilizing vortices that have less than two-thirds of the spanwise wavelength of the most amplified ones – known from the upstream flow deformation or micrometre-sized roughness elements technique – by the orifice order on the panel can secure the desired stabilizing effect of suction and lower the necessary suction amount significantly.