Effectiveness of micro-vortex generators in tandem in high-speed flows

Micro-vortex generators offer an alternative to boundary-layer bleed and suction to mitigate flow separation due to shock/boundary-layer interaction. In the last two decades, a number of devices have been investigated either in isolation, wherein the focus has been on studying the flow physics, or in tandem, for studies in flow-separation control. While studies of vortex generators in a supersonic free-stream (without a separate shock/boundary-layer interaction) have generally focused on the understanding of the flow donwstream of single devices, their effect on the flow while being used in tandem have not been looked into in as much detail. This work investigates the effect of inter-device spacing in a systematic manner to optimize the configuration of two micro-vortex generators placed side-by-side. A set of objective functions is designed using boundary-layer integral properties and are determined for various inter-device spacing. Simple, slotted, and ramped-vane devices are investigated in this work. Results show that increased device spacing reduces device drag but also worsen boundary-layer. RANS computations are performed using an immersed-boundary method that renders the vortex generator as a point cloud. The effect of the inter-device spacing of the vortex generators on the mitigation of flow separation is finally tested using simulations of a Mach 2.5 impinging oblique-shock/boundary-layer interaction. Flow-separation profiles indicate that the ramped-vane device provides better mitigation of separation compared to the slotted device and its performance improves with reduction in inter-device spacing.