We determine the aerodynamic forces and moments of airfoils or other components in wind tunnel tests. Typical research goals are the modification or manipulation of the flow field, e.g. with blowing or suction, the reduction of drag, enhancement of lift or interactions between wing and propellers.
Many of the fundamental problems in fluid mechanics are best studied using specially designed generic experiments. Simplified environments are used — for example, flat plates, simple channel flows, and turbulent wakes — to isolate the problem of interest and measure it under controlled boundary conditions.
"Active Flow Control" is a targeted and systematic manipulation of the flow field. In contrast to more classical approaches, such as surface shaping, we typically utilize additional energy sources, such as pressurized air for blowing or a pump for suction.
Typically, only parts of the flow field and/or individual flow variables are accessible in measurements. Therefore, numerical simulation methods are used to complement and accompany the analysis of flow fields, design predictions, and comparisons with experimental data. We investigate a wide range of temporal and spatial scales: From subsonic to hypersonic and from boundary layers to the full geometry of aircraft or road vehicles. The advantage of data from numerical simulations is that the entire physical field is available as a data set.