Experimental study of linear closed-loop control of subsonic cavity flow

A study is presented of the modeling and implementation of different concepts for linear feedback control of a single-mode resonance shallow cavity flow. When a physics-based linear model is used for cavity pressure oscillations-, an H∞ controller was designed and tested experimentally. It significantly reduced the main Rossiter mode for which it was designed, while leading to strong oscillations at other Rossiter modes. Other linear control methods such as Smith predictor controller and proportional integral derivative (PID) controller exhibited similar results. The ineffectiveness of using fixed linear models in the design of controllers for the cavity flows is discussed. A modification of the PID design produced a parallel-proportional with time-delay controller that remedied this problem by placing zeros at the frequencies corresponding to other resonance states. Interestingly, it was observed that introducing the same zero to the H∞ controller can also successfully avoid the strong oscillations at other Rossiter modes otherwise observed in the single-mode-based design. The parallel-proportional with time-delay controller was compared to a very effective open-loop method for reducing cavity resonance and exhibited superior robustness with respect to departure of the Mach number from the design conditions. An interpretation is presented for the physical mechanisms by which the open-loop forcing and the parallel-proportional with time-delay controllers reduce the cavity flow noise. The results support the idea that both controls induce in the system a rapid switching between modes competing for the available energy that can be extracted from the mean flow.