Effect of splitter plate on unsteady flows around a body of revolution at incidence

Numerical solutions of the thin-layer approximation of the 3D Navier-Stokes equations are presented for flows around an ogive-cylinder body with and without a splitter plate. It is suggested that the presence of the splitter plate prevents the interaction between flows on either side of the symmetry plane. It is concluded that, as a result of the enforced symmetry, the antisymmetric mode of the convective instability near the apex of the body cannot be excited and, therefore, the vortices remain symmetric, staying low and parallel to the upper body surface. The antisymmetric mode of the absolute instability mechanism cannot be initiated, which suppresses the alternate shedding of vortices from the cylindrical portion of the body. High-frequency fluctuations of the shear layer are found to remain virtually unaffected by the presence of the splitter plate.