The use of streamwise finlets as a passive flow and aerodynamic noise-control technique is considered in this paper. A comprehensive experimental investigation is undertaken using a long flat plate, and results are presented for the boundary layer and surface pressure measurements for a variety of surface treatments. The pressure–velocity coherence results are also presented to gain a better understanding of the effects of the finlets on the boundary layer structures. The results show that the flow behaviour downstream of the finlets is strongly dependent on the finlet spacing. The use of finlets with coarse spacing leads to a reduction in pressure spectrum at mid- to high frequencies and an increase in spanwise length scale in the trailing-edge region due to flow channelling effects. For the finely distributed finlets, the flow is observed to behave similarly to that of a permeable backward-facing step, with significant suppression of the high-frequency pressure fluctuations but an elevation at low frequencies. Furthermore, the convection velocity is observed to reduce downstream of all finlet treatments. The trailing-edge surface pressure spectrum results have shown that, in order to obtain maximum unsteady pressure reduction, the finlet spacing should be of the order of the thickness of the inner layer of the boundary layer. A thorough study is provided for understanding of the underlying physics of both categories of finlets and their implications for controlling the flow and noise generation mechanism near the trailing edge.

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An experimental study is carried out to investigate the unsteady pressure exerted on the surface of a round cylinder in the subcritical Reynolds number range. Results are presented for the surface pressure fluctuations, spanwise coherence, lateral correlation length, and peripheral coherence. Discussions are provided for the dominance of the first three vortex shedding tones at different regions of the cylinder and the size of the flow structures around the cylinder. The dataset provided have shed new light on the unsteady aerodynamic loading acting on cylinders and provides the impetus for further research on the aerodynamics and aeroacoustics of bluff bodies.

This paper presents a comprehensive experimental study on the unsteady pressure exerted on the surface of a round cylinder in smooth and turbulent flows. A highly instrumented cylinder with several static pressure taps and dynamic pressure transducers at different spanwise and peripheral locations was used, enabling extensive dynamic surface pressure, coherence and turbulence length-scale analysis. The effects of the free-stream turbulence and turbulent length scale are investigated by placing the turbulent-generating grids within the wind tunnel duct. For both the laminar and turbulent incident flows, the surface pressure results show the emergence of the fundamental, first and second harmonics at most peripheral angles, while at the cylinder base the surface pressure spectra is dominated by the first harmonic. It has also been observed that an increase in the level of the turbulence intensity results in the increase of the energy level of unsteady pressure acting on the cylinder. An increase in the length scale of the incoming flow structures is shown to result in an increase in the energy level of the tonal frequencies and the broadband content of the surface pressure spectra. The spanwise coherence results have also shown that an increase in the length scale of the flow structures increases the spanwise correlation length of the flow structures at the vortex shedding frequency at the stagnation point, while at the cylinder base, the spanwise correlation length decreases at the vortex shedding frequency.