Closed-Loop Turbulence Control: Progress and Challenges

Closed-loop turbulence control is a critical enabler of aerodynamic drag reduction, lift increase, mixing enhancement, and noise reduction. Current and future applications have epic proportion: cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, wind turbines, medical devices, combustion, chemical reactors, just to name a few. Methods to adaptively adjust open-loop parameters are continually improving toward shorter response times. However, control design for in-time response is challenged by strong nonlinearity, high-dimensionality, and time-delays. Recent advances in the field of model identification and system reduction, coupled with advances in control theory (robust, adaptive, and nonlinear) are driving significant progress…