On the Stability of Gradient Based Turbulent Flow Control without Regularization

Abstract: In this paper, we discuss selected adjoint approaches for the turbulent flow control. In particular, we focus on the application of adjoint solvers for the scope of noise reduction, in which flow solutions are obtained by large eddy and direct numerical simulations. Optimization results obtained with round and plane jet configurations are presented. The results indicate that using large control horizons poses a serious problem for the control of turbulent flows due to existence of very large sensitivity values with respect to control parameters. Typically these sensitivities grow in time and lead to arithmetic overflow in the computations. This phenomena is illustrated by a sensitivity study performed with an exact tangent-linear solver obtained by algorithmic differentiation techniques.