Numerical simulation of compression corner flows at Mach number 9

A hypersonic vehicle encounters a wide range of conditions during its complete flight regime. These flight conditions may vary from low to high Mach numbers with varying angles of attack. The near-wall viscous dissipation associated with flows at combined high Mach and Reynolds numbers leads to significant wall heat transfer rates and shear stresses. The shock wave/boundary-layer interaction results in a flow separation region, which commonly augments total pressure losses in the flow and lowers the efficiency of aerodynamic control surfaces such as fins installed on a vehicle. The standard turbulence models, when used to resolve such flows, result in incorrect separation bubble size for large separated flows. Therefore, it results in an inaccurate aerodynamic load, such as the wall pressures, skin friction distribution, and heat transfer rate. In previous studies, the application of the shock-unsteadiness correction to the standard two-equation k-ω turbulence model improved the separation bubble size leading to an accurate pressure prediction and shock definition with the assumption of constant Prandtl number. In the present work, the new shock-unsteadiness modification to the k-ω turbulence model is applied to the hypersonic compression corner flows. This new model with variable Prandtl number is based on the model parameter, which depends upon the local density ratio. The computed wall pressures, heat flux and flow field are compared to the experimental data. A parametric study is carried out by varying compression deflection angles, free stream Reynolds number and wall temperatures to compute the flow field and wall data accurately, particularly in the shock boundary layer interaction region. The new shock-unsteadiness modified k-ω model with variable Prandtl number shows an accurate prediction of initial pressure rise location, pressure distribution in the plateau region and heat flux in comparison to the standard k-ω model.