COnsortium
VKI
von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics
Project Participant
Eu contribution € 878 985
Key personnel
Bayindir H. Saracoglu - WP4 Leader
Dr. Bayindir H. Saracoglu has completed his doctoral studies at the Wright State University, USA
in 2012. He has been working on supersonic flow control using experimental and numerical tools. His research interests
include numerical and experimental investigation of pulse and rotating detonation wave engines, development and
characterization of active and passive flow control methods, measurement techniques for unsteady flows, flow
visualizations and advanced processing tools, design and thermodynamic analysis of novel propulsion cycles for future
air-transport. He has been working in several European research programs “Hexafly-International”, “LAPCAT2”,
“TransHyberiAN”, “TIDE”, “SOAR”, “ACOC-TH” at various levels from Co-PI to task leader and the US funded
program on flow control methods for shock attenuation as the main researcher. Dr. Saracoglu is also the Deputy
Coordinator and Innovation Exploitation Manager in STRATOFLY. He has authored 13 peer-reviewed journal papers,
2 contributions to the books, 43 conference papers and 2 patents. Dr. Saracoglu is current the Research Manager at the
VKI and an Associate Fellow of AIAA.
Contact Bayindir at saracog@vki.ac.be
Christophe Schram
Dr. Christophe Schram has a PhD degree in aeroacoustics awarded (Cum Laude) by the Technische Universiteit
Eindhoven and the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2003. He was Research Associate in Cambridge University pursuing
investigations on gas turbine thermo-acoustical instabilities in 2004 and Aeroacoustics Project Leader and RTD Project
Manager in the company LMS International (now Siemens Industry Software) from 2005 till 2009. He then joined the
VKI faculty as Assistant Professor in 2009, Associate Professor since 2011. Current fields of research: theoretical,
experimental and numerical aeroacoustics (aeroacoustic analogies, rotating machinery tonal and broadband noise, one-
dimensional and multi-modal network modelling, passive noise mitigation, acoustic beamforming, self-sustained
oscillations in pipe systems and solid rocket motors, supersonic jet noise, subsonic and supersonic fluid-structure
interaction). He has authored more than 100 journal papers conference publications and contributions to books in total.
Dr. Schram has a thorough experience as Coordinator of European research projects (Collaborative Projects, Research
and Innovation Actions and Marie Curie Projects) since FP6.subsystems. In the context of the currently on going H2020 STRATOFLY project, she is currently leading the conceptual design activities (WP2) and she is responsible of the STARTOFLY Academy initiative. She is
Principal Investigator of an ESA funded project dealing with the development of an innovative database to support
roadmapping activities in the field of high-speed transportation. She acts as main contributor in several national and
international funded projects dealing with different aspects of high-speed transportation including, propellant subsystem design, Thermal and Energy Management Subsystem, Life Cycle Cost and Technology Roadmapping. She is Member of the Editorial Board of
Journal of Space Safety Engineering published by Elsevier.
Contact Christophe at christophe.schram@vki.ac.be
Tom Verstraete
Dr. Tom Verstraete has obtained his PhD in Electromechanical Engineering from Ghent University in 2008 in
collaboration with the von Karman Institute for fluid dynamics (VKI) on the development of multidisciplinary shape
optimization algorithms applied to turbomachinery components. In December 2008 he became Assistant Professor at
VKI, in 2015 he obtained an individual Marie-Curie fellowship and worked for 2 years as a visiting professor at Queen
Mary University of London. From 2017 he became a visiting professor at Ghent University and since April 2020 he is
a full professor at VKI. His research focuses on the development of efficient gradient-based shape optimization techniques applied to multi-disciplinary design problems. The software his team developed is in use at different aero-
space and automotive companies around the world. He has 36 journal papers, +90 conference papers, 12 contributions to books and 3 patents.
Contact Tom at tom.verstraete@vki.ac.be
Sophia Buckingham
Dr. Sophia Buckingham has been working as Senior Research Engineer in the EA Department of the von
Karman Institute since 2012, and obtained a PhD degree in Engineering Sciences and Technology from UCLouvain in
2018 on Prandtl number effects in abruptly separated flows, combining wind tunnel tests and LES simulations. Part of
this work focused on LES/DNS turbulent inflow generation techniques, and the adaptation of the stochastic cell
perturbation method, previously developed for atmospheric flows, to make it applicable to a wider variety of wall-
bounded flows. Her areas of research include weather modelling, wind resource assessment, CFD modelling of wind farms flows and scaled wind tunnel testing of atmospheric boundary layer flows. Dr. Buckingham has 8 papers on
archival journals and 15 conference publications.
Contact Sophia at sophia.buckingham@vki.ac.be
Guillaume Grossir
Dr. Guillaume Grossir has received a Master of Research in 2010 from the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics. He received his PhD in 2015 from the Université Libre de Bruxelles for his work that lead to improved flow
characterization in hypersonic facilities and a better understanding of hypersonic boundary layer instabilities during the
laminar-to-turbulent transition process. During his post-doctoral work at the von Karman Institute, he then developed a
free-flight measurement technique suitable for hypersonic aerodynamic investigations above Mach 10. He is now a
Senior Research Engineer leading the experimental hypersonic activities at the VKI. His research focuses on hypersonic
aerothermodynamics for both aerospace vehicles and space debris. He is also active on the development of new flow
diagnostic techniques and on the improvement of hypersonic facilities.
Contact Guillaume at guillaume.grossir@vki.ac.be
Cansev Kucukosman
Dr. Cansev Kucukosman has obtained her PhD degree in aeroacoustics from TU Delft in 2019 and been
working as a research engineer at von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics since then. Her expertise concentrates on
the numerical modelling based on semi-empirical approaches and experimental acoustic measurements of wind turbine
noise. Her research areas extend to scaled wind tunnel testing of atmospheric boundary layer flows, supersonic jet noise,
aircraft aerodynamics performance and pipe acoustic resonances. She has 2 journal publications and 5 conference
papers.
Contact Cansev at yakut.cansev.kucukosman@vki.ac.be
Publications
European Space Agency International Conference on Flight vehicles, Aerothermodynamics and Re-entry Missions and Engineering (FAR), Monopoli, Italy, October 2019
Goncalves P., Ispir A., Alsalihi Z., Saracoglu B.H.
Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering, January 2014; DOI: 10.3233/ICA- 140463
Joly M., Verstraete T., Paniagua G.
Journal of Sound and Vibration 333(1), 2014
Martínez-Lera, P., Schram, C., Beriot, H., Hallez, R.
Boundary-Layer Meteorology, April 2018, Vol. 167, pp 77-98
Coudou, N., Buckingham, S., Bricteux, L., Van Beeck, J.P.A.J.
Physics of Fluids, 2018, 30 (126102), 1- 13
Grossir G., Dias B., Chazot O. and Magin T.E.
Infrastructures
VKI H-3 facility
The VKI H-3 facility is a Mach 6 blow-down hypersonic wind tunnel. It provides a uniform axisymmetric jet with a diameter of 120 mm at Mach 6. Dry air is supplied at stagnation pressures ranging from 6 bar to 35 bar. The test gas is heated up to a total temperature of 500 K in order to avoid condensation in the test section. The free-stream unit Reynolds number typically varies within 6,000,000/m-30,000,000/m. The wind tunnel includes a model injection mechanism in order to avoid blockage and excessive heating of the model during start-up. The test chamber is vacuumed prior to each test using a supersonic ejector. The test model is then injected once the Mach 6 free-jet is established. A new Mach 5 nozzle will be designed, manufactured and installed for the aerodynamic tests for MORE&LESS project. The VKI H3 wind tunnel is a very flexible facility and a number of intrusive and non-intrusive techniques can be used to investigate a wide variety of hypersonic phenomena.
JAFAR
The JAFAR facility (Jet Aeroacoustic Facility for Aerospace Research) will be made available for this project. It consists in an anechoic room with an internal volume of 4x3x4 m3, with a nozzle entering the room through the floor, all the pressure regulators and other noisy equipment being located in the basement. The cut-off frequency of the room is about 200 Hz. The unheated air supply system is connected to the 35 bar pneumatic network through a set of pressure regulators to a 10 bar buffer tank with two separate manifolds feeding an annular and a central nozzle (in the case of coaxial jets), through a silencer. It can naturally be operated with a single jet as well. The usual operating range of the jet(s) spans from the subsonic regime up to Mach 2, with test durations at Mach 2 of the order of 20 minutes for a nozzle diameter of 0.04 m diameter. The flow is unheated. The room has a small window permitting to pass a laser beam for running simultaneous optical and acoustic measurements. The seeding is then injected in the buffer tank. Optical diagnostics include (stereo-)PIV and LDV, which can be combined with hot wire anemometry and pneumatic probes. On the acoustic side, 20 Brüel & Kjær 1⁄4-in microphones can be arranged in polar arrays for directivity measurements, and a beamforming antenna of 64 electret microphones can be used for source localization using an in-house Generalized Inverse Beamforming algorithm.
