Abstract
An experimental study is conducted to investigate the effect of two-frequency forcing on turbulent flow behind a backward-facing step at the Reynolds number of 27000 based on the step height. The forcing is provided from a thin slit located at the edge of the backward-facing step to increase mixing behind the backward-facing step and consequently to reduce the reattachment length. With single frequency forcing, the minimum reattachment length is obtained at the non-dimensional forcing frequency (F) of St$\_$h/ = 0.29. With two-frequency forcing, a subharmonic frequency (F/2) or biharmonic frequency (2F) is combined with the fundamental frequency (F), i.e. (F, F/2) or (F, 2F) forcing is applied. In the case of (F, F/2) forcing, the reattachment length is not much sensitive to the phase difference between F and F/2. However, the reattachment length significantly depends on the phase difference between F and 2F in the case of (F, 2F) forcing. At a certain range of the phase difference, the reattachment length becomes smaller than that of the single frequency forcing.