Dagao Wang

The incident shock attenuation phenomenon in shock tube has received widespread interest because of its inevitable influence on experimental gas properties. However, few studies have investigated the cascading effects of the resulting nonuniformity on shock reflection in shock tunnels before the nozzle. This paper describes a numerical study on the unsteady reflection of a decelerating incident shock driven by a decelerating piston, as a simplification of the complex nonideal factors. The initial decay and uniform parameter distributions are generated based on the non-inertial frame. The results indicate that the existence of the nonuniform area forces the reflected shock wave region to undergo a transition process of attenuation and then stability. The final values of the gas parameters in zone 5 will, therefore, deviate from those given by the traditional relation for an ideal shock tube, which are only dependent on the terminal shock Mach number. This affects the determination of the total temperature T5, which is difficult to measure directly. We discuss the reconstruction of the nonuniform region with the attenuation trajectory of the incident shock wave and find that there is no one-to-one correspondence between this trajectory and the resulting nonuniformity, which introduces additional uncertainties to the predictions. Thus, an analogy method is developed through the multilevel block building algorithm, allowing the total temperature T5 to be determined using the total pressure p5 considering the effect of nonuniformity. Further assessments verify the applicability of this method in cases with multidimensional and viscous interactions.

Air-blowing is one of the techniques for active flow control and thermal protection system of hypersonic vehicles. Introducing air into the hypersonic boundary layer alters the cross-sectional profile of the boundary layer, thereby influencing the boundary-layer transition. This study investigates the active air-blowing control effects on the hypersonic flat-plate boundary layer under various blowing mass flow rates and incoming Mach numbers by solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations with the Langtry–Menter four-equation transitional shear stress transport model. The study examined alterations in the blowing boundary-layer profiles under two conditions: natural and bypass transition, induced by different blowing flow rates. Blowing significantly alters the sonic line and boundary-layer profile characteristics, triggering blowing oblique shock and causing alterations in the instability mechanisms of the two transition states. A higher Mach number intensifies compressibility effects, stabilizing the boundary layer and leading to an increase in the thickness of the blowing boundary layer and air film.

The interactions between oblique and bow shock waves are significant problems related to the aerodynamic force and thermal performance of hypersonic vehicles, but few studies have considered the dynamic effect of the body's motion on the phenomena. In this work, a numerical study on the oblique and bow shock waves ahead of an elliptic cylinder rotating with a forced-oscillation approach was conducted at Mach 5 by solving the unsteady, two-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations in a non-inertial coordinate system. The hysteresis loops of aerodynamic coefficients were analyzed first, and it was found that the moment is sensitive to rotation. Then, two different hysteresis forms were found at positive and negative angles of rotation (AOR), corresponding to cases with the interference point above or below the wall, respectively. When AOR is positive, the rate-dependent transition hysteresis among various shock interaction types causes the movement of strong flow structures (reflected shock wave, Mach stem, and jet) to always lag behind the body's motion. When AOR is negative, besides the evolution hysteresis of flow structures, two unusual patterns between Edney Types III and VI were observed on different transition paths, which led to very different peak pressures. Also discussed are the driving mechanisms associated with the effect of the subsonic region and the downstream boundary of the interaction zone, as well as the modulating action of the formed virtual Laval flow channel. Additional simulations were performed to study the effect of rotation speed on the transition boundary and the transition structures between Types III and VI.

In this Letter, the dynamic effect of rotation on unsteady shock interaction between an oblique shock wave and bow shock ahead of an elliptic cylinder is numerically investigated. First, a non-deforming grid method based on a non-inertial reference frame is applied for supersonic/hypersonic flow around an arbitrarily moving body. A simulation considering a rotating elliptic cylinder is then conducted at Ma5 with forced-oscillation approach. The results show that the shock interaction structure during rotation has obvious hysteresis compared with the static condition, and transition among different types of shock interaction is also affected by rotation direction and speed. The mechanisms are briefly addressed.