Assessment of information-theoretic-based control of turbulent flow separation of an aircraft in stall

Abstract

The problem of control for turbulent flows is investigated within the framework of information theory. The key quantity of interest is the Shannon entropy, which quantifies the amount of information in the states of the turbulent flow. Control theory is then cast in informationtheoretic terms by envisioning the controller as a device aimed at reducing the unknown information associated with the flow state to be controlled. Two cases are considered to assess the effectiveness of the formulation: opposition control in a turbulent channel flow for drag reduction and suppression of the separation bubble in an aircraft in stall using JAXA standard model. In the channel flow, it is found that information-theoretic control enables optimal control for drag reduction consistent with previous results reported in the literatute. In the JAXA standard model, we show that our formulation is able to inform the location of the actuation to suppress the trailing-edge separation bubble.