Resonant Flow in Small Cavities Submerged in a Boundary Layer

The viscosity-dominated unsteady flow in a row of small transverse square cavities lying submerged in a turbulent boundary layer is first considered. Experiments performed primarily with one size of cavities show that the cavity flow can be excited by freestream disturbances in a narrow frequency band that is independent of the flow speed. The turbulent boundary layer in which the cavities are submerged remains transparent to the disturbances. The cavity flow resonates when the depths of the cavity and the Stokes layer are nearly the same, that is when 2π fk^2/ν = 1, where f is the frequency of the resonant cavity flow, k is the cavity height and ν is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid. An associated laminar boundary-layer excitation experiment shows that the instability process over the grooved surface also involves the amplification of Tollmien-Schlichting (T-S) waves in much the same manner as in a smooth-wall Blasius profile but the grooves enhance receptivity. A theory is given proposing that the resonant groove flow in the low Reynolds number turbulent boundary layer is driven by highly amplified matched T-S waves. The possible relevance of the observed coupling between the large-scale freestream disturbances and the small-scale cavity flows to the turbulence production mechanism in a smooth flat-plate turbulent boundary layer is also discussed.