Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2011
Experiments are performed to study the unsteadiness of rectangular cavity flows at Mach 0.325, 0.620 and 0.818. Typical characteristics of mean surface pressure distributions show a slight pressure variation near the front face, a local peak surface pressure ahead of the rear corner and a low pressure at immediate downstream of the cavity. Larger peak pressure and pressure variation near the cavity rear face are observed as the length-to-depth ratio increases. Surface pressure fluctuation distribution shows an increase toward the cavity rear face and reaches a peak value. At further downstream locations, the level of surface pressure fluctuation approaches the value of incoming flow. The amplitude of peak surface pressure fluctuation is associated with length-to-depth ratio and reaches the maximum at length-to-depth ratio of 8.60. This is considered due to intermittent switching between open- and closed-cavity flows. Higher moments of surface pressure signal at immediate downstream of the cavity show a similar trend. More negative skewness coefficient and larger deviation of flatness coefficient indicate the presence of more large negative events, which is mainly corresponding to mass removal process (breath-out phase). This unsteady mass flow is more pronounced at higher Mach number.