Turret Optimization Using Passive Flow Control to Minimize Aero-Optic Effects

Over the past several decades, optical systems have begun to be deployed regularly on aircraft that fly at compressible flow speeds. During this time, these optical systems have also moved towards shorter operating wavelengths that can deliver a higher peak irradiance in the focused spot on a distant target, and the assumption is that future systems will use even shorter-wavelength lasers.

As this trend towards short-wavelength systems continues, the need to take into account the effect of flow-induced, or 'aero-optic,' aberrations that occur in the vicinity of the parent aircraft has become progressively more important. The conventional method for mounting an optical system is to place it in a hemispherical turret; however, from an aero-optic standpoint, there are two problems with this mounting arrangement. First, shocks begin to form on the surface of a sphere (or hemisphere) at a critical Mach number of only around 0.55. Furthermore, a shear layer is produced due to flow separation on the aft side of the sphere; both of these flows, shocks and separated shear layers, involve strong index-of-refraction variations in the flow that would severely aberrate the outgoing beam.

One approach to the problem would be to employ adaptive-optic (AO) methods in which the conjugate of the aberration is applied to the outgoing beam before it transmits through the aero-optic flow; however, state-of-the-art AO systems are generally unable to match the high temporal frequencies associated with aero-optic flows. As such, there is a need for innovative mounting strategies for optical systems that avoid or mitigate the formation of optically-aberrating flows in the first place.

This dissertation outlines an investigation into aerodynamic shaping of turrets to mitigate the aero-optic aberrations produced by shock waves and shear layers. Specifically, a computational and experimental investigation into the 'virtual duct' concept, which is a passive flow-control approach to mitigating aero-optic effects on spherical turrets, is described. The aerodynamic features associated with the problem are investigated, and the performance of different turret configurations as a function of the design parameters is explored. By the use of optimization techniques along with experimental validation, it is shown that significant increases of delaying flow separations up to an elevation angle of 162.4° while maintaining a critical Mach number over 0.7 can be attained on a hemispherical turret without a downstream fairing. The investigation shows that the virtual duct technique is an effective passive flow-control approach for dealing with aero-optic flows on spherical turrets in subsonic to transonic flows.